


Knock me down(All the demons creeping in)

by Crescent_Blues



Series: Antichrist Verse [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bc Stick, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Child Soldiers, Childhood Trauma, Civil War Fix-It, Deaf Clint Barton, Defenders Fix-It except it's really not, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Terrorism, Jewish Bucky Barnes, Multi, Murder, My favorite tag honestly, Sokovia Accords, Synesthesia, Terrorism, The slow burn is back guys, Trans Peter Parker, Trauma, You'll pry that shit from my cold dead fingers man, except it's still sad, hate it, i guess??, in general, lying, okay i'm done, straight up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:20:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 30,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22258612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crescent_Blues/pseuds/Crescent_Blues
Summary: Smoke is rising through the air like jagged fingers.It's Hell's Kitchen and he's eleven years old.It's his city going up in flames, it's his heart rising in his throat, it's his friends that might be dead.It's watching Sokovia fall from the sky half a world away all over again.But it's different this time.It's different this time because this time Peter can do something.(Peter is spiralling until suddenly he isn't, Bucky Barnes gets the advocate he never asked for, and Civil War goes slightly, marginally, better)(Defenders goes the same)
Relationships: Ben Parker & Peter Parker, Clint Barton & Peter Parker, Danny Rand/Colleen Wing, Frank Castle & Peter Parker, Franklin "Foggy" Nelson & Peter Parker, James "Bucky" Barnes & Peter Parker, Karen Page & Peter Parker, Luke Cage & Jessica Jones & Matt Murdock & Danny Rand, Luke Cage/Claire Temple, Matt Murdock & Elektra Natchios, Matt Murdock & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, Matt Murdock & Peter Parker, May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker
Series: Antichrist Verse [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1510475
Comments: 140
Kudos: 679





	1. The Mount of Olives

**Author's Note:**

> Oh my god lads it's 2020.  
> This chapter has been through so much.  
> So many revision. So many distractions. So much spiralling. My cat went missing during the chapter. My cat got found during this chapter. I got food poisoning. I got distracted. I binged all of Ben10 for that good, good childhood nostalgia.  
> It's been such a wild ride just trying to get this damn thing written.  
> Many thanks to my betas, because otherwise this wouldn't be as put together as it is

Retribution tastes like red and blue.

Coincidentally, retribution also tastes like copper.

Like blood on his knuckles and tears on his shoulders, soothing touches and sympathetic hugs, broken bones and breathless sobs, bright police lights and the shining skyline.

Peter finally understands what Matt meant.

He finally understands Matt's “world on fire”.

Because around him, everything is burning.

People scream and cry _and_ _sob and beg_ for help, and _no one hears them._

Gunshots rip the air apart and knives click open in alleys, and no one hears them, no one sees them.

No one dares step into the shadows for fear of getting burned.

He never quite got it, never quite understood everything Matt had said when he first explained it.

But now he gets it.

Now he gets it and he doesn't know how Matt managed to hold out for so long, for over a _decade,_ as the entire world screamed around him.

Traffic lights and radio waves and camera clicks and car engines and tram lines and a cacophony of voices talking over one another for miles and miles and _miles._

Peter thought he knew what people meant by the city that never sleeps.

He was wrong.

He was so, so wrong.

And he has to _do something_ about it before the skyscrapers and warehouses swallow him whole.

Because there may not be horns on his head, not anymore, but he's still a Devil through and through, and he'll help his city even if it kills him.

It probably will.

He was born and raised in Queens.

Peter's almost certain that he'll die there.

He can't find the time to care.

Not when he's saving people.

Not when he's helping people.

Not when he's so far above the ground it feels like nothing will ever hold him down again.

Not when there's a city to save that _doesn't want his help._

Peter wonders if this is how Matt felt back when he was just the Man in Black and not the Devil of Hell's Kitchen.

Back when the only people that cared were the ones forgotten, the rescued children and the weeping women.

He wonders if it's normal to be frustrated about it.

Beyond frustrated, even, because he _just wants to help_ and _nobody wants him to._

_Not everybody wants to be saved._

Not by him.

Not by suits and Kevlar.

If it's not the Avengers, _they don't want it._

Hell's Kitchen learned that it needed it's Devil's.

Harlem learned that it needed it's Hero.

Chinatown learned that it needed it's vigilantes.

Brooklyn and Queens learned that they needed _him_.

The rest of New York hasn't had a _reason_ to learn that they need more than uniforms and guns, more than distant suits of armor and flying shields.

So they don't.

And for every grateful person he saves, for every girl he walks home, for every man he pulls out of a car wreck, for every child he returns to weeping parents, there's always another person to scream, to howl, insidious and full of venom, that _“we don't want you”._

For every thank you and every tear and every clumsy hug, there's a dozen cries of “ _menace”, “freak”, “danger”._

For every hand he helps up, there's a thousand scorching words painting the headlines, the airwaves, the city streets.

There's bullet holes in him now that aren't from criminals.

They're from cops.

People yell at him now, in the light of the sun and the glow of billboards, and they say things that are meant to _hurt._

Things like how he's nothing but a narcissistic freak in it for the attention.

Things like how he doesn't care about anyone's lives, whether people live or die.

Things like how New York would be better off if he stayed the hell away.

Things like how he's going to _get someone killed._

_They don't know that he already has._

It's like they don't realize he's human, that he hears all of these horrible things day in and day out, and remembers every single one.

They don't see a person trying to do what's right.

They see a symbol to scream and yell every one of their grievances towards, and there's no one who will tell them to stop.

He does his best to not think about it.

To just keep doing what he's doing.

He's helping people.

He's helping them and that's all that matters.

He's not in it for the glory, for the praise.

He just wants what happened to Uncle Ben, to May and him, to never happen again.

He won't let anymore uncles die.

He won't let them leave behind husbands and wives and nieces and nephews.

And there's a tiny part of him that fights for no more Matthew and Jonathan Murdocks, too.

No more sons left alone.

No more fathers shot in back alleys.

No more Castles.

No more dead children and dead wives.

No more death.

Peter loves his city.

He loves it more than anything.

Bucky loves Brooklyn and Matt loves Hell's Kitchen.

Brooklyn used to know Bucky, and Hell's Kitchen loves the Devil.

Peter loves New York.

New York doesn't love him.

And he doesn't care.

———

The funeral is two weeks before the suit is made.

It's sunny and bright, and Peter's knuckles are still torn a soft, bloody red.

There's a surprisingly large amount of people clustered around the green.

He's not sure _why_ it's surprising.

Uncle Ben is– _was_ an amazing person.

Of course he had lots of people that would miss him.

Friends and coworkers and family.

Distant family, because they all know the dangers of the Parker Luck, but family nonetheless.

Maybe what's really surprising is how many of them Peter _knows._

He hadn't realized Officer Davis knew Ben.

Maybe their precincts were close.

He's not sure.

Miss Claire is there too, and so is Officer Davis' wife.

Officer Davis' son is there, half behind his mother, and he stares at Peter with knowing eyes, sunflower headphones and a too-big suit.

They all stand with Aunt May.

Peter hadn't known they knew each other, either.

Miss Claire and May, sure, but only in a distant sort of way.

In a coworker way.

He hadn't known Officer Davis and his wife were friends with May and Ben.

He hadn't known they were close enough to go to Uncle Ben's funeral.

Matt and Foggy and Karen show up, but he'd been sort of vaguely expecting them to come.

They knew Ben, and they knew May.

They know him.

They know just how much he's tearing himself up.

He wasn't expecting Detective Mahoney.

But he's there anyway, offering his condolences, and orbiting between Foggy and the other officers.

Bucky shows up too.

Disguised in a dark pea coat, hair tied back neatly, scarf and gloves and thick boots against the cold wind and crunching snow.

He hadn't known Uncle Ben.

He doesn't know May.

He only knows Peter.

He still shows up anyway, risks appearing in a group of officers even though he's a wanted man.

The stones he lays on Ben's grave feel a thousand times heavier than all the rest.

He understands.

Bucky may have forgotten a whole lot, but there's still some part of him that remembers his beliefs.

He leaves after that, but not before squeezing Peter tight and muttering a prayer above the turned soil.

He wonders if Bucky's honoring more than just Peter's dead uncle.

Maybe he's honoring the Bucky that died in Germany.

Maybe he's honoring the Barnes' that died before he could find them again.

There's a man that stands at the metal fence line in a great billowing trench coat soon after, and he smells like gun oil.

Like copper and dust.

He wonders if Karen called him, or if he just knew.

Mr. Castle stays far away from the police and keeps his face mostly covered.

The look in his eyes says that he understands too.

Of course he does.

He understands and that's why everybody knows his name.

When Peter opens his arms, Mr. Castle sweeps him up easily, cradles the back of his head and holds him close.

Peter can smell saline, but the only tears that fall are his.

Mr. Castle mutters his prayers too.

Peter silently vows to leave stones and flowers on the Castles' graves.

And he'll leave some for the man that died and left Mr. Castle in his wake.

MJ and Ned are soft background presences that make him a little nauseous to look at.

May too.

They don't know.

They don't know that he could've stopped it.

They don't know that it's Peter's fault that Ben's dead.

He could've been there.

He could've been there if he hadn't been so _stupid._

He'd been the one that pushed Matt.

He'd been the one that pushed investigating the heavy hitters.

He'd been the one that pushed hitting the heavy hitters _back._

He'd been the one that got a price put on their heads _._

He'd been the one that forced them to the ground.

And if he hadn't then maybe the Antichrist would've saved Ben Parker and he would still be alive.

_Stupid._

Peter's eyes burn, and it's not from the chill.

It's from the blood staining and blistering his hands.

Mr. Castle and Matt understand that too.

They all understand.

But that _doesn't make it any better._

Not when the gunshot still echoes in his head.

Not when he still sees Ben's red painting his arms.

Not when the final pounding of his heart rings in his ears.

It doesn't make it any better.

Nothing will.

Nothing will ever make it better.

And a fire simmers under his skin, full of teeth and rage and horns.

———

Sometimes he wonders how much May really knows.

How much Ben really knew.

About the sneaking out, about the injuries, the scars and the bags and the blood stains.

They know– knew– _had known_ what bullet wounds looked like, knife cuts and electrical burns, knew what they _scarred_ like.

The twisted flesh in his left shoulder, the clean pink line on his thigh, the angry ripples in a perfect ring across his arms and torso–

The furrow along his stomach.

The cracked lines across his knuckles.

The indents on his back from a crowbar.

They had to know.

They had to.

There's only so much he can hide and those–

Those weren't it.

Peter will never know just how much Ben knew.

How much he didn't say and didn't let on.

How much he kept to himself and smiled and nodded as Peter lied to his face.

He's terrified to ask May.

He's terrified to tell her the truth.

He doesn't think he can.

So he just keeps _lying,_ even as it kills him.

Peter doesn't do his homework, and it's because he forgot, not because he got blood on it.

Peter can barely walk on his left leg, and it's because he banged it into the table, not because the new Irish almost completely caved his knee in.

Peter needs a new textbook, and it's because it got ruined in the rain, not because there's a bullet lodged three hundred pages in.

He lies.

He lies and lies and _lies,_ and he's had years to perfect his horrible craft.

Peter's good at lying.

He promised he would tell them, before Ben died, before Taskmaster burned him so badly, before him and Matt hung up their horns and went to the ground.

He doesn't know that he can keep it now, with a piece of their hearts in the ground and the bills that climb ever so steady.

Things have changed.

Bucky's started giving him more pay from their joint jobs, the car repairs and the dog walking and the house cleaning.

He's started watching Lucky when Clint is out of town for the money and extra food that May doesn't have to pay for.

The Bulletin pays him an intern's salary to run coffee and take pictures and keep Karen from living in the file room.

And after everything, he still goes out as Spider-man.

Peter doesn't get a lot of sleep.

He can't afford to.

If he takes a break–

The bills might go over and they'll be evicted, or someone else he cares about will die because he wasn't there, and both options are just–

They're unthinkable.

He can't choose between one or the other, for all that they're extremes and probably irrational.

He can't think past the looming fear.

And everything else suffers for it.

He can't spare more than a few hours a week to train with Matt.

He barely has time to just _hang out_ with Ned and Michelle anymore.

He's dropped club after club after club, AcaDec only hanging on by a thread.

He just.

He just doesn't have time.

He's drowning in not having enough time.

The only thing Peter has left is helping people, is being Spider-man, and that always ends with more bruises than he started with.

It always ends with more broken bones and more shed blood and more itching scabs that heal almost overnight, like ants crawling over his skin.

Like spiders dancing across his bones.

Peter's sure that one day he'll get used to it, mostly because he has to, but he isn't yet, and it keeps him up with the discomfort of it all.

But at least it means he's saving people.

And that has to be enough.

He doesn't know what he'd do without it, without the purpose, without the outlet, without the adrenaline.

He'd probably end up like Matt.

Like Matt and his punching-bag scabs.

His punching-bag scabs and his buried, dusty suit and his office job that's driving him insane with the underhandedness of its policies.

To put it simply, it's killing him.

It's killing him.

Not going out and helping people, not calming the Devil in his chest, not getting to act like himself for one second, not getting throw away the cane and the helplessness, it's killing Matt.

Slowly and horribly.

And it's just getting worse.

And it's all his fault.

And there's nothing he can do about it.

It's like everything's falling apart at once.

Ben and Matt and May–

Ben dead and Matt dying and May inching herself ever closer to the line.

She's running herself into the ground, taking night shift after night shift, just to keep the bills at bay.

There's only so much that the money he makes can help, especially when so much of it goes into suit repairs and medical supplies and web fluid chemicals and gadget components… 

He doesn't have enough time.

Peter just doesn't have enough time.

It's like middle school all over again, the Hell's Kitchen bombing all over again, the pre-spider bite Peter Parker life _all over again._

He's little and small and weak and _useless._

The powers, the training, it all feels like nothing.

Peter’s falling.

He’s crumbling under the weight.

He should’ve listened to that ghost.

He should’ve listened to Elektra.

He should’ve listened.

_“Be careful, Little Atlas, lest you fall under the weight of the world.”_

———

He needs something, _anything,_ to keep him from thinking about Ben.

From thinking about how everything's slipping like sand through his fingers.

From thinking about how he _screwed up._

And that's when he starts hearing the first whispers about the Sokovia Accords.

A document created to manage the super powered peoples of the world.

A document created to manage the _Avengers._

He almost wants to laugh, but that's when the sick feeling sets in.

Checks and balances are important, are necessary, but Peter's never been a fan of red tape.

He's never been a fan of being told what to do.

He's never been a fan of one set of people having all the power.

The world could trust the Avengers, for all their faults and collateral damage.

They were made to help people, to save the world.

To defend the people and places that couldn't defend themselves.

Peter trusts the Avengers.

He doesn't trust the politicians that want to control them.

 _Especially_ because, if he's heard right, Peter's one of the people that they'd like to control.

"What do we know about General Ross?”

Karen hummed. “He had something to do with the Hulk and the monster that he fought in New York about a year before the Incident. There’s not a lot on his involvement, so I’m guessing it’s top secret bullshit or whatever. He’s got a Congressional Medal of Honor, don’t know what that’s for either.”

“So he’s high ranking, a… Lieutenant General," Foggy reads, fanning himself with one of the papers, "and now he’s Secretary of State."

Matt slips into view and sets a folder down, pulling out his laptop.

"He had something to do with the Hulk’s first rampage, has a mystery Congressional Medal of Honor, and his first big idea as Secretary of State is to control the Avengers," Matt sums up, collapsing his cane.

Foggy wrinkles his nose. “Yeah no, very much don’t like that.”

Peter crosses his arms and shifts. “The concept sounds good? But if something’s world threatening, or already causing a lot of damage, it usually… happens spontaneously. There’s not a lot of time for regulations.”

“Gonna have to go with Pete here on this one,” Foggy says and Matt nods, adding, “Good concept, going to go terribly in execution.”

“I was just gonna say fuck the government, but rational reasons usually help with convincing other people about your opinions.” Karen grumbles from the table.

Matt makes a hand-wavy gesture before walking off screen. “Eh, fuck the government is pretty rational considering its track record.”

Peter drops from the ceiling, reaching up to grab his laptop and setting it on his desk.

“Says the guy that works for the government, Mr. Lawyer Man.”

Foggy grins, and then tries to hide it behind his hand. “He’s got you there, buddy.”

“You’re a lawyer too!”

“And? I’m not the one saying fuck the government.”

Matt steps back into frame, a suspicious look on his face, eyebrows drawn and nose scrunched up.

Peter can see the city skyline through the windows of Foggy’s office.

It’s not as high up as Hogarth’s, he knows that at this point, has been to both, but it’s still kind of pretty.

Like Matt’s kaleidoscope billboard.

“You’re thinking it,” he finally scowls. “I can hear it.”

Foggy squints back.

“… Bullshit. Thinking doesn’t have a sound.”

"Yes it does."

"No it doesn't."

_"Yes it does."_

_"No it doesn't!"_

_"Yes it–"_

Karen hits mute.

Peter startles and looks to her corner of the screen, shoe laces forgotten, head tilted to the side.

She purses her lips and glances away for a second, like she's thinking something over, rolling the words around in her head.

And then she finally says, "Peter, where did you hear about this?"

He doesn't tense.

Really, he doesn't.

He's not quite sure how to answer her question, because he kinda sorta heard about it from two people, he doesn't want to get into why he knows and is still talking to Clint, and JB was better as a ghost in his stories that no one met or really knew.

_Uh, yeah, so I kind of overheard Hawkeye the elder while he was telling Hawkeye the younger to stay underground because of it, even though he also wasn't supposed to know about it._

_Oh, I heard about it from war criminal and wanted man James Buchanan Barnes while I was crushing him at Yahtzee because he always keeps an ear to the government and anything to do with the Avengers._

Mhmm.

That would go _great._

"I keep my ear to the ground," is what Peter says, and he's pretty sure Karen knows he's not telling her the full truth, but he's also pretty sure she won't press him.

This time.

For the moment.

_Maybe._

It's Karen, so…

Yeah.

It's Karen.

 _And_ yep there it is, Karen's drawing down her eyebrows and starting to open her mouth, leaning forward–

Peter unmutes Foggy and Matt.

He doesn't think they're arguing anymore?

They'd probably call it friendly debate, which is bullshit, but whatever distracts Karen long enough for him to get his shit together for school is good enough.

"–rom freshman year? The one that always hit on you?"

Foggy screws up his face and crosses his arms, saying "I recall, Matthew, yes, because you _scared him away–"_

"Because he smelled like _blood,_ Foggy. He smelled like _blood._ All the time. Constantly. Consistently. Under all of the Oxy Clean and lavender stuff? One hundred percent blood." Matt states firmly with a dramatic gesture of his hands. "Pretty sure he was a serial killer. Baby serial killer. He probably died in soph because of a mob hit or something."

"Like Elek–"

"Literally exactly like her except I don't think he wanted to make you _do_ a murder, he just _wanted to murder you."_ Matt stressed, and Foggy winced.

"Yikes. We're just too beautiful for this world, Matty. It doesn't deserve us."

"You definitely, me on the other hand–"

"Shut the fuck up Mathew Murdock."

"Wow Foggy."

"Someone was murdered at your college?"

There it is!

Something new for Karen to fixate on!

_Yes!_

Peter snags his laptop bag and starts packing the cords.

Foggy shifts uncomfortably and makes a face.

Matt looks even _more_ uncomfortable.

"Yes? He was definitely _dead_ at our college but the cops were never super sure if it was natural causes or murder _hey Matthew you're being super quiet."_

Matt stopped inching towards his desk and instead flung himself over it before sliding down his chair and into carpet town.

 _"I don't wanna talk about it."_ Said the desk monster.

"Oh my god you know don't you?" Said Foggy in return.

_"Don't wanna talk about it."_

“Dude is that why you were so fucked up about it?”

_“Franklin.”_

“Jesus, man, pulling out the stops and everything, sorry I asked.”

 _“Franklin,”_ Karen mutters like a child given scissors.

Foggy twists back to look at them.

“So like, there was a murder at my college that has apparently traumatized my dearest Matthew, _to this day,_ so I’m gonna go get him like a coffee or something.”

“Make it black like his soul,” Karen suggests.

Foggy puts a hand to his chest, faux scandalized, and Peter smiles.

“Uh, no, I don’t hate him?”

He laughs, just a little bit, and pauses before logging off the call.

He has to leave in two minutes.

“Hey, uh, Foggy, Karen?”

They stop softly bickering to focus on him.

The back of his neck prickles, like someone’s walking over his grave.

“Before I go, could you like… keep half an eye on the situation?

I've just… I've got a bad feeling about the Sokovia Accords."

Something at the corners of Foggy’s eyes tighten, and Karen’s fingers go white around her pen.

Do they feel it too?

“Sure thing, kiddo.”

———

He's at school when it happens.

When the world stops spinning.

That used to seem so dramatic, so impossible, but there's really no other way to describe how something horrible will happen and then the entire planet will grind to a halt under the watch of thousands upon millions of eyes, all silently screaming in horror.

The world stops spinning.

And then _Peter's world_ stops spinning.

And it happens like this:

Everybody’s phones start screaming at the end of AcaDec practice, and it sounds a little bit like if the fire alarm and a klaxon teamed up specifically to grate on Peter’s ears.

Flash swipes the notification away.

Cindy shuts off her phone.

Sally stuffs hers in her backpack.

And Michelle reads the message.

And Michelle reads the message out loud.

And Michelle reads the message out loud, the room growing colder as she says the words, “Terrorist attack on the Vienna International Center.”

Ned’s phone slides across the table, a blond woman from a news channel speaking in front of an aerial view of a smoking, blackened building.

It looks almost like Hell’s Kitchen for a moment, and Peter feels eleven years old again, angry at a man getting away with destroying the world and terrified that people he loves aren’t going to make it out alive.

Terrified that Matt’s going to get himself killed and Foggy’s not going to be okay in the hospital.

“More than seventy people have been injured,” the blond woman recites to the frozen world. “At least twelve are dead, including Wakanda's King T'Chaka.”

The screen is completely taken over by a grainy street camera still of a man in a dark coat and a dark hat, collar pulled to his mouth, and–

_“Officials have released a video of a suspect who they have identified as James Buchanan Barnes, also known as the Winter Soldier.”_

–the world washes out into grayscale.

He doesn’t know what the news anchor says next, can barely hear anything past the ringing in his ears.

It can’t be Bucky.

It can’t be.

He would never do that.

He would never bomb a building like that, not anymore, not one full of innocent people.

Not unless… not unless HYDRA got him again, but he’d promised to send a message through if he’d been found or compromised and he _hasn’t_ so he has to still be fine.

Bucky has to be fine.

He couldn’t have bombed the Vienna International Center.

He’d been on the East Coast for the better part of the _year._

Peter knew he could get across the oceans, somehow, but for the most part Bucky stuck to the states, and almost all of the trails that he was or had been chasing were limited to New York and the surrounding states by now.

And even ignoring that, mysterious travel means aside, Bucky didn’t like airports either.

Too many people, too many cameras, too many means of security that weren’t complete garbage, and enough metal detractors that his _very recognizable, rare-metal prosthetic_ would be discovered in about two seconds.

It wasn’t Bucky.

It was impossible.

Peter was almost completely positive that it wasn’t Bucky, just the barest, slimist chance of HYDRA getting their hands back on him hanging in the back of his mind.

So if it wasn’t a brainwashed Bucky…

Then who–

His phone starts ringing.

Peter almost dives for the unknown number flashing on the screen and slips out the door, backpack rattling.

He can almost pretend that Michelle’s eyes aren’t burning holes into the back of his head.

JB sounds breathless.

He would’ve been at work, Peter realizes, up to his arms in car parts when he heard the news.

He probably booked it as soon as he could.

They know his face.

They know some of his name.

Peter would like to think JB’s boss was better than that, but it’s better safe than sorry.

“Have you seen the–”

“Yeah.”

“–news. Oh. Kid, I swear–”

“I know,” he interrupts again as gently as he can. “Any ideas?”

Bucky doesn’t say anything for a moment.

Then, “Might be tryna to flush me out. Get the whole world lookin’ for my face,” he says as Peter clatters down the stone steps.

He’s not the only one leaving early from clubs, and slipping into the crowd is easier than it’s ever been.

Half of the people he sees aren’t even paying attention, aren’t even _moving._

They’re staring at their phones, or at billboards, watching the news unfold an ocean away.

“That’s a pretty good way to get people paying attention, but they can’t possibly expect you to already be as far away as the states if they think you did it, so you should have some leeway for at least a little while.”

Bucky huffs a humorless laugh. “I‘m aware, Солнышко. Still doesn’t help much.”

“Not a– whatever,” Peter huffs. “Whatever. If you’ve still got that medical mask, you should put it on. That or a scarf. Something to cover the bottom of your face. It’s still kind of cold so it should be okay. I can meet you at the apartment and we can figure something out?”  
There’s silence from the other end.

“JB if you don’t let me help you, _so help me God–”_

“Fine. I don’t like it, but fine.”

“You don’t have to like it,” Peter says quietly. “You just have to accept it.”

There’s a huff from the other end, and a sigh.

“See you when I see you.”

"Пока."

"…Пока."

In the end, Peter doesn’t bother with street level, with taxies and crowds and trains.

He finds an alley, slips off his top layer of clothes, and throws on his mask.

He locks the zippers on his backpack with zip-ties and webs it to the brick wall before climbing as high as he can.

And then Peter jumps.

And Peter falls.

And Peter _rises._

He glides on air, on pendulum swings, across traffic and water and bridges.

Web slinging is easy.

It's an art.

It's the fastest way he's going to get to Brooklyn, Bucky's apartment a solid destination in his mind, and be able to plan.

He doesn't know how, but they have to come up with something to fix this.

In another country, far away from New York, his friend is being framed for a tragedy.

People are dead.

People are dying.

Smoke is rising through the air like jagged fingers.

It's Hell's Kitchen and he's eleven years old.

It's his city going up in flames, it's his heart rising in his throat, it's his friends that might be dead.

It's watching Sokovia fall from the sky half a world away all over again.

But it's different this time.

It's different this time because this time Peter can _do something._

———

“Hello Mr. Stark.”

There’s a hum from the floor.

It sort of harmonizes with the buzzing in the walls.

Peter can always hear power cables, a constant sort of background noise that started when he got his powers, but it's never been as heavy as it is then in Stark Tower.

It’s making him nervous.

"Hi, hey, Peter, was it? I did research on you, you know. None of it said you would be inclined to breaking into my tower and webbing me to a chair after you knocked out my AI security system. How'd you do that by the way? I’m trying to decide if I want to fight you or hire you at this point, which is very impressive, considering I’m Tony Stark and you’re about fifteen years old."

Peter grimaces from ceiling.

He's had the whole secret identity thing drilled into his bones at this point and Tony Stark, _the_ Iron Man, just casually name-dropping him is–

Hmmm.

_Hmmm._

_Nope don't like that._

"Can you– can you not use my name? I mean, I did knock out your security system and I can't hear anybody on the floor, but I've got an aunt to go home to, you know?"

Something about Tony Stark's shoulders smooth out, almost casually, like he's relaxing in spite of the situation.

It's very practiced.

It's very natural.

Peter's seen the Devil do the same thing a thousand times on the streets.

Peter's seen _himself_ do the same thing in the reflections of broken glass.

It's a familiar movement.

He wonders if Tony Stark does it because he doesn't want to scare him, or because it's just habit when dealing with people younger than him.

With Matt it's both.

"Right. Spider-man only. Sorry, kid.” _The_ Actual Tony Stark says, but he only sounds a little apologetic. "By the way, did you say _hear?_ Your suit doesn't look _that_ high tech, but I could be wrong. I'm usually not. You got sharp ears?"

He cocks his head to the side.

"… Wide hearing range, yeah. The only thing the suit does is cover me, really. Makes the bullets less bloody and more bruisy."

Actual Literal Tony Stark… smiles?

At him??

Wow.

What a strange life you lead, Peter Parker.

"You design it yourself?"

He squints for a moment, then slowly nods.

"Did some of the work myself, too, but I've got a friend that makes these." He answers carefully. "They have more time than I do, so they did… you know… most of the work."

Mr. Stark nods solemnly from his office chair prison.

"I get it. I made Rhodey's suit, but you already knew that, yeah? I didn't really give it to him though, he just kinda…" Mr. Stark's mouth goes into a flat line. "Stole it."

"Oof," is what Peter says.

You know.

Like an idiot.

Wait.

Hold on.

Shit.

Is this what successful stalling looks like?

He squints down at Mr. Stark again again.

"You're really good at misdirection."

His face falls, almost comically so.

How much is for his benefit, and how much is a persona that Mr. Stark never turns off?

"Damn. You found me out already?" He smirks, but it looks fragile.

"Don't feel bad?" Peter says, though it comes out more as a question. "I'm supposed to find out stuff like that. You're really good though, I promise, I just can't let you stall until your AI turns back on."

Mr. Stark sighs, his body language loose.

"Well, I tried." He mumbles, sounding dramatically defeated. "Hey, speaking of, how'd you get past FRIDAY, kid? She's state of the art. Pretty neat party trick. You do birthdays?"

Peter smiles behind his mask.

"Series of planted code breakers. I slingshot around your building a lot. The AI didn't realize anything was wrong until I'd swung around for the tenth time today, but it was too late by then." Peter explains with maybe just a _little bit_ of pride. "It just caused a blackout. She'll come back in about half an hour. It was kind of the only way I could think of that would let me talk to you."

Mr. Stark eyes him for a second, appraising.

It feels just like Mr. Castle and the Falcon.

He wonders if maybe it's not a military thing.

Maybe it's a _'I've seen too much'_ thing.

Then he wonders if maybe one day he'll look like that, too.

Appraising and calculating and _tired._

"This isn't a money thing," Mr. Stark finally says, and he sounds almost disappointed, like that would've been easier, and doesn't wait for Peter to respond. "And if it's not that, it means you need something else that can only come from me specifically. What's your angle, Spider-kid?”

Peter drops from the ceiling on soft toes and crosses his arms.

This conversation suddenly feels a lot less fun.

The horns he’s not wearing drag his chin down, angle his face against the light, curl his fingers and straighten his shoulders.

He doesn't really think about it.

It's habit.

Old, old habit from something he can't afford to be, not anymore.

“Bucky Barnes.”

Mr. Stark makes a complicated face.

Somewhere between confused and apprehensive.

It might just be the lighting, but his face looks tighter, his eyes darker, his whole body more _tense._

But really, in Peter’s experience, it’s almost never _just the lighting._

“What’ve you got to do with Barnes, kid?” He asks, voice softer than Peter’s ever heard it over the TV.

Voice softer than when Peter was nine years old and almost took a repulsor blast to the face.  
“I’ve known him since I was twelve.”

“You’ve–” Mr. Stark starts and then stops, taking a deep breath and calming his hackles. Peter tilts his head and tries to tune out the softening buzz of the electricity in the walls so that he can focus on his heartbeat.

It’s erratic.

"Barnes is a war criminal." Mr. Stark starts very carefully, like he's tasting all the words in his mouth before using them. "A dangerous, wanted war criminal, and you've–" he takes a deep breath again. "Known him since you were _twelve._ For three years. _Three years._ And you never told anyone."

"Yes."

"That's. That's loyalty I guess." Mr. Stark breathes out.

He wonders if it's his imagination that makes it sound bitter.

Then Peter shrugs, and tries to think about how he wants to do this.

He wants Mr. Stark on his side, _needs him_ to be on his side, if he has any hope of helping Bucky.

He’s not big and important like Mr. Stark or Captain Rogers.

He’s just a weird, angry kid from Queens.

If he openly stands with Bucky, who’s wanted for _terrorism,_ openly goes _against_ Mr. Stark, who’s seen to be on the right side of the law, he’d be signing a death sentence.

Not just for him, either.

For May and Ned and Matt and Foggy, and he can’t do that to them.

So he has to do what he can from the other side of the divide.

Bucky has to find Captain Rogers and not get arrested.

Peter has to convince Mr. Stark that his side is wrong.

He’s not sure which one is harder.

“He helped me when he didn’t have to, and when a bunch of other people didn’t.” Is what Peter says, and hopes that it’s a good enough beginning to get Mr. Stark really listening.

Mr. Stark frowns instead.

“He’s killed a lot of people, kid. Not someone you really want on your Mario Kart team, you know?”

“So have you. So has Captain America. So has the Black Widow. The last person Bucky killed was back during World War Two.”

“The Winter Soldier–”

“–isn’t Bucky.” Peter interrupts as gruffly as he can, which is pretty damn good considering who he hangs out with. "I have a question, actually."

Mr. Stark blinks in confusion, but tilts his head down in acknowledgement anyway.

"Do you remember the Kilgrave cases, Mr. Stark?"

A slight nod.

“Do you remember how he made people kill themselves and others? How he made people do terrible things that they couldn’t do anything about? Things that they could only _watch themselves do?”_

“That’s not–”

“It’s exactly the same,” Peter says, cutting him off, “except Kilgraves’ victims were conscious when he made them do his bidding, and when he asked things of you, no matter how terrible, you felt _good_ about it.”

He can see a new kind of horror rising in Mr. Stark’s eyes.

“You met him, didn’t you?” He whispers so very softly.

Peter clenches his jaw. “He made me buy a train ticket, but that’s not really the point. I’ve met someone that he controlled for months, and Miss Jones is… I mean this in the nicest way possible, but Miss Jones is a _wreck_ because of it. Kilgrave ruined her. HYDRA ruined Bucky. That’s what those kinds of people do. They take good people, and they ruin them. They make them do things they would never normally do.

“This is gonna sound really stupid, but you haven’t seen Bucky like I have. I’ve watched him spend _three years_ trying to remember himself. He wanted to be an engineer before the war, you know? He didn’t. He didn’t know. Went to the Stark Expo as many times as he could before he was drafted. And he _didn’t even know_ until I saw a footnote on a plaque and bought him a used engineering textbook. I’ve never seen someone almost cry over a textbook before, Mr. Stark. Have you?”

Mr. Stark’s face has gone complicated again.

Confusion and apprehension and something like an apology given form.

“I haven’t, no. Spider-man–”

“He’s my friend, Mr. Stark. And even if he wasn’t, isn’t it kind of stupid for someone on the run to bomb something like the International Center? Isn’t it kind of weird that an assassin that was a ghost up until a few years ago got caught on camera? Isn’t it kind of crazy that this happened right as the Avengers were splintering over the Accords? Isn’t it–”

“I get it.” Mr. Stark interrupts, surprisingly gentle. “I get it, kid, everything’s coming together too perfectly, or horribly, or whatever, for it to just be a coincidence. I get it. Do not combine the rings. Do not become Captain Planet.”

Which is great, because Peter isn’t quite sure what he was going to say after that last one.

“I know Bucky didn’t do it,” he says softly. “Not just because I know _him,_ but because he was at work when it happened, and helping me relocate some cats the day before. But I’m not stupid, and I can't help him if I don't have someone like you."

Mr. Stark is quiet.

Staring and appraising and calculating.

Dimly, in the back of his mind, Peter remembers that Mr. Stark's done more than just inherit a company.

There's doctorates, patents, _elements_ to his name.

He's a superhero.

He's a genius.

And Peter's going to manipulate the fuck out of him or die _goddamn_ trying.

"You got anything else you wanna get off your chest?" Is what Mr. Stark says in response instead of answering, and Peter thinks that maybe he might be genuinely asking. "Cause this has been a frighteningly enlightening conversation."

He rocks back on his feet.

Are the walls getting louder?

"Well I don't trust the Accords, even if I think they're a good idea. I feel like I'll probably hate them if I read them, though."

Mr. Stark blinks curiously.

"Yeah?"

"I generally distrust the government seeing as how they would probably weaponize me like Captain Rogers or the Black Widow or you, and I'm still in highschool." Peter explains distractedly. "They also generally have a poor track record…"

He frowns.

The walls have to be getting louder.

They _have_ to be.

He's sure of it.

Has it already been half an hour?

Or did he just time it wrong?

Hacking is more Ned's thing but he obviously couldn't ask him, so.

He could've gotten it wrong.

Mr. Stark whistles and Peter looks back over.

"You look distracted, Spider-kid." He observes. "Bicycle thief you need to catch? Kitten in danger?"

Peter fishes out a canister of web dissolvent and flips it between his fingers.

"The walls are getting louder. She's coming back online."

"FRIDAY is?"

He raises an eyebrow Mr. Stark can't see.

"You got any other AIs?"

"Yes, actually." Mr. Stark answers. "She's in storage."

Peter _huhs._

Then he throws the canister at Mr. Stark, and it shatters against the webbing before eating through the silk like acid.

He eases himself back up to the open window as Mr. Stark pushes out of the office chair and stomps his foot against the ground a couple times.

It probably fell asleep.

Peter holds up his hand in a two fingered salute.

"Think about what we discussed? You know where to find me."

And then he leans back on his heels.

And gravity reaches up to greet him.

And he slips off the window sill.

And Mr. Stark lets him go.

———

"MATTHEW I HAVE MADE A _MISTAKE."_

"Jesus– _fucking_ Christ, _MATT."_

Peter scrambles past Foggy as fast as he can and onto the armchair meant solely for panicking.

It was the Panic Chair.

It saw much use.

Karen didn’t even look up from her beer.

It felt like it was probably too early for day drinking, but then again, this was Karen and he was only fourteen, the hell did he know?

Matt tracks him across the room, brow furrowing when Peter ensconces himself in the Panic Chair.

“You smell like electricity,” he says in lieu of greeting, and Peter whines pathetically.

“I was at Stark Tower.”

All three of them go very still.

Then, Karen tosses back a long swing of her beet, Foggy tosses up his hands in the kitchen, and Matt drags his hands through his hair.

“Why??” He asks desperately.

Peter buries his face in the pillows.

“To talk to Tony Stark,” he whimpers.

Matt covers his mouth with a fist.

_“WHY???”_

Peter sinks into the cushions even farther.

“To keep him from murdering Bucky Barnes,” he answers miserably.

Karen points her beer at him with a suspicious eyebrow.

“And that is your problem… because?”

He stays silent for too long, and Matt goes very still.

Oh no.

Bad idea, bad idea, _abort._

He shouldn’t have came here.

He should’ve kept his panic to himself.

Going to Matt’s was a bad idea.

_Bad idea._

Foggy links his fingers together and leans over the counter.

“Child,” he starts very softly, and Peter knows that he’s doomed, “Why is Bucky Barnes your problem?”

He whines again, and hopes that if he looks and sounds pathetic enough they might drop it.

They don’t.

Foggy leans even farther over the counter, and Matt just silently stands near him, like a living brick wall, and it’s the worst thing he’s ever seen.

Foggy and Matt shouldn’t team up against him.

It’s mean.

“Peter Benjamin, why is Bucky Barnes your problem?”

He looks away and tries to hide under the pillows.

 _“Peter–”_ Foggy starts, and wow he just breaks right then and there.

He’d be the worst spy.

Or maybe Foggy would be the best interrogator.

“He’s my friend!” He exclaims in a rush. “I‘ve known him for like three years! He’s JB and I was with him when he would’ve had to plant the bombs for Vienna to happen! That’s why he’s my problem!”

He drags the pillow back over his face and hugs it with both arms.

Oh god, he can’t look at them.

They’ll be angry or furious or _disappointed_ and if that happens then he’ll _just fucking die._

He can’t deal with people disappointed in him.

He just– physically _can not._

This is how he dies.

This is the end of Peter Benjamin Parker.

He feels like screaming.

Would it be rude to scream?

“–eter oh my god. Kid, calm down, you’re acting like we’re gonna draw and quarter you or something.”

Peter oozes away from Foggy’s voice.

“You’re gonna be _disappointed,”_ he whines, “and that’s _worse.”_

He can hear Foggy breath deeply through his nose, and then the creak of his bones as he gets close enough to sit in front of the Panic Chair.

“Okay, so, one: you have very strange priorities and I’m not sure if that’s our fault or if you’re just like this. Two: why would we be disappointed? Can you look at me?”

Peter drags the pillow a little bit down his face and eyes Foggy over the edge.

He doesn’t _look_ disappointed.

_Yet._

Foggy smiles, and Peter can see Matt moving closer to settle next to him. Karen is still on the couch, but her beer is on the table and she’s leaning forward to look at him.

“There we go. Pete?”

He looks away again.

“Cause I didn’t tell you I knew Bucky?” He tries tentatively.

Foggy is quiet.

“Well I’m definitely not disappointed,” he says, and Peter tries not to listen to his heartbeat because he knows it makes him uncomfortable, but it’s so _hard_ not too, and he thinks that it might ring _true._ “A little concerned, yes, but that’s pretty normal, so. Not really anything new there.”

He glances back over.

“Concerned?”

Foggy gives him another small smile.

“You give Matty hives going out alone. He paces,” Foggy adds. “Wrings his wrists, calls me at two AM, the whole thing.”

Matt squawks.

“I do _not.”_

“Sorry pal, but you totally do.”

Karen snorts, and Peter finds a maybe-smile hidden behind the pillow.

“I don’t.”

“You do.”

“I _don’t.”_

“You _do.”_

 _“Children,”_ Karen intones imperiously. “Are you going to stop arguing on your own, or do I have to get the spray bottle?”   
Matt does a full body flinch and Foggy clenches his jaw.

“No, no,” Matt says quickly, “That won’t be necessary. We’ll stop. Right, Fogs?”

Foggy narrows his eyes.

 _“Right Fogs?”_ _  
_ His eyes narrow even further.

_“Foggy please.”_

One last squint. 

“Yeah alright.”

_“Oh thank god.”_

Peter can’t help it.

He laughs.

Foggy smiles again and laughs with him.

“Hey, there he is!”

Matt looks completely enchanted for a moment. Just, so absolutely _lost,_ that it’s a wonder he knows how to get anywhere at all.

Then he leans over and ruffles Peter’s hair.

He swats the hand away, and Matt smiles at him.

“Little baby demon,” he croons. “Tiny wee devil. Small vessel of hate.”

Peter swats at him again with more force, and Matt dodges away laughing.

Foggy watches him go, and for a moment he just looks so _painfully fond—_

Peter smiles, and maybe it’s too knowing, because Foggy quickly looks away from Matt.

He doesn’t notice.

Or maybe he does, and just doesn’t say anything about it.

“Bitty bug child,” Foggy adds fondly, “Tiniest spider lad.”

_“Stop.”_

“Never.”

“I am _fourteen years old.”_

“Just a little _baby,_ gonna be _fifteen whole years old_ in _August.”_

Matt wipes away a fake tear. “They grow up so _fast,_ Fogs.”

“I _know,_ Matty,” he simpers with a hand to chest. “Why, I remember it like it was yesterday, when he was just a little wee thing, wearing _glasses_ and using _inhalers.”_

“Those were the days!” Matt crows. “But he’s still kinda little, Foggy.”

“OI.”

“He’s gonna be our little baby brother _forever,_ Matthew. I’ve never had one that actually listens to me like him. It’s so novel.”

Matt crinkles his nose, and the crows feet at the corners of his eyes deepen and stretch as he grins.

“Hey, don’t let him know! He doesn’t know that’s weird yet!”

Peter tries to scowl into his pillow, but it’s really more of a smile.

“… I also, uh, might’ve… talked to him about the Accords. Mr. Stark, I mean.”

Foggy pauses.

He tilts his head, and Matt snorts when he does.

“Nice multitasking?” Foggy tries.

Peter shrugs, but it kind of comes out weird since he’s crammed himself into a chair.

“I might’ve talked at him for thirty minutes. And he seemed pretty impressed that I hacked into his tower, so he might not arrest me.”

Matt purses his lips.

“If he tries to arrest you, I’ll ruin him. Not sure how, but I will.” He promises, like it’s supposed to make Peter feel better instead vaguely unsettled.

… actually no, it does kind of make him feel better, horrifyingly enough.

“Please don’t ruin Tony Stark.” He says instead of encouraging Matt’s behaviour.

“I make no promises.”

“I’ll help,” Karen offers from the couch.

“Thank you, Karen.”

Petter frowns over at her, finally rising up past his pillow.

“Karen please.”

She shrugs and takes another sip of her alcohol.

“I enjoy a good ruining, Peter. You should know this.”

“I mean yeah, but—”

“No buts.”

Peter opens his mouth to respond—

And then his phone buzzes in his back pocket.

He freezes.

It’s supposed to be on Do Not Disturb.

_It shouldn’t have done that._

Peter pulls it out, eyebrows drawn, and the cracked screen shows him one Gmail notification.

A letter from—

He almost drops his phone.

Because it’s a letter from _Mr. Stark._

Foggy, Matt and Karen aren’t smiling any more.

Neither is he.

Peter unlocks his phone.

If this is a trap, or a warning, or _something,_ it’s better to get it over with, yeah?   
He opens the email.

It’s not a trap.

It’s not a warning.

It’s a normal email.

There’s one document attached, titled _Sokovia Accords Copy_ , and four words.

_I thought about it._

———

He's never been on a plane as nice as Mr. Stark’s quinjet.

When he’d first seen it on the runway, he hadn’t been sure if the apprehension was because of what he was walking into, or because his parents died in a plane crash.

And not even on a commercial plane, either.

They’d died alone.

On a quinjet.

They’d died on a _quinjet._

Because they were _SHIELD agents._

Sometimes, Peter forgets that.

Would they be proud of what he’s become?

He curls into his seat, knees to his chest.

Does he care what they think?

It’s not like he remembers them.

Did they know Clint, or the Black Widow?  
Is that why he’s so nice to him?

Because he remember’s Peter’s parents?

Wouldn’t he have said something by now if he did?

“Who’s the shortstack, Tones?”

Peter looks up.

Colonel Rhodes — _the_ Colonel Rhodes, _War Machine_ — is twisted in his seat to look at Mr. Stark instead of him.

He looks tired.

Can the War Machine become tired of war?  
Mr. Stark glances over and tilts his head in a silent question.

The Vision, who Peter _just now realizes_ is float-standing in the corner, follows the movement but doesn’t say anything.

Peter shrugs and makes a hand wave-y gesture.

The Vision swivels to look back at Mr. Stark, who rolls his eyes and sighs, and it actually sounds a lot like Mr. Castle.

Peter can never tell him that.

He’s on thin ice about Bucky as it is.

If Mr. Stark knew that he knew the _Punisher…_

Yeah, no.

Not even gonna think about it.

At least not until Mr. Stark actually likes him.

“Spider-kid here,” he jabs a thumb at Peter, “is the reason why we’re going to try to reason with Steve first.”

The man in the cat suit turns sharply to look at him.

If the eyes of his mask moved like Peter’s, he’s sure that they would be squinting.

He tries to melt backwards into his seat.

“And,” Mr. Stark continues, “the reason why I’m having FRIDAY and a set of lawyers look over the Accords.”

“Lawyers?” Colonel Rhodes drawls, one eyebrow raised. “Tones, I thought you were all about being held accountable, about the checks and balances.”

Mr. Stark idelly spins a pen between his fingers.

Peter’s phone vibrates in his jacket pocket.

“I was,” he begins. “And then I found a passage that said, and I quote — bring it up for me FRI— _‘Any enhanced individuals who use their powers to break the law, including those who take part in extralegal vigilante activities, or are otherwise deemed to be a threat to the safety of the general public, may be detained_ indefinitely without trial.’ Oh and I also _particularly_ liked _‘Those with secret identities must reveal their legal names and true identities to the United Nations’_ and _‘Those with innate powers must submit to a power analysis, which will categorize their threat level and determine potential health risks’._ Also enjoyed _‘Those with innate powers must also wear tracking bracelets at all times.’_ You know the X-Men right? Professor Xavier? Pretty much all of his students are enhanced, genetically, and never know when their powers are going to pop up. By virtue of using their powers for the first time, regardless of what they are, they would be considered breaking the law. And then just the whole _‘no trial’_ thing rubs me the wrong way. There’s more, but those are just some of my favorite footnotes that were hidden in all of the big text.”

Peter fiddles with his phone and coughs into his fist.

Mr. Stark looks at him.

“You find anything new and horrible?” He asks tiredly, Colonel Rhodes looking quietly horrified and the Vision unreadable.

Peter squirms under all of the attention.

“So I was having my lawyer friends look at it and there… might be a footnote that says all guilty parties will be subjected to imprisonment on the RAFT? Without trial, indefinitely? And all party members in the know will also be subjected to heavy fines and also possible imprisonment for harboring and aiding people breaking the law by not registering?”

Colonel Rhodes flinches, and it could be the RAFT thing or it could just be Peter’s voice.

The first time he met Detective Mahoney in the suit, the guy almost fell off the fire escape he was climbing when he heard his voice.

He’d had _many_ complaints about Peter’s age.

Matt had laughed in his face.

Like Peter’s age was going to _stop him,_ you sweet, delusional detective.

“Ah,” Mr. Stark says without inflection. “Delightful. All people who don’t register will be placed in a super-supermax prison, without trial, where no one will know what happens to them. Love that.”

“Did you bring a child?” Colonel Rhodes decides he finds more concerning than the whole RAFT thing.

"Actually he bullied me into bringing him along." Mr. Stark says breezily.

"Only like, a little bit. I mostly just forced him to listen to me talk for thirty minutes."

"I was half convinced he was gonna to kill me actually, when he dropped from the ceiling. Very terminator walk."

Peter tilts his head to the side and squints. He’s been doing a lot of squinting lately. "I have more self restraint than that right now, but thanks? I think?"

"Right now?" Colonel Rhodes asks with some distress.

"I'm not currently in a spiraling pit of depression and rage.” Peter explains. “I have anger problems."

"Oh, I get that." Mr. Stark says, and Colonel Rhodes kinda just _looks_ at him.

He has a feeling that Colonel Rhodes is the rational one to Mr. Starks chaos right now.

Then Peter jumps half out of his seat when the _Black Widow_ pops her head into the cabin because _holy shit he’d forgotten she was flying the quinjet._

“So are we still fighting Steve and Barnes, or…?” She trails off, one eyebrow raised.  
Mr. Stark snorts. “If he doesn’t listen, yeah. We’ve got a fun, new, secondary objective though, also courtesy of Spider-kid.”

The Black Widow turns to look at him, interest plain on her face, and he feels a bit like a bird being stalked by a cat.

Like a bug under a magnifying glass.

“Oh?”

“Barnes has an alibi.” Mr. Stark says without preamble, and Cat Man’s suit-claws rip into the armrests like wet paper.

Peter’s hands itch for his own.

His burns sting.

He misses his suit.

It’s been a long six months.

 _“What?”_ Cat Man hisses, and that really should not be funny because it’s _terrifying,_ but… Cat Man.

_Hissing._

Peter coughs so that he doesn’t laugh hysterically.

“Barnes was at work, believe it or not.” Mr. Stark drawls, hand braced against the ceiling. “I talked to his boss and everything. I’ve also got eyewitness accounts placing him at an animal shelter the day before, and even with a quinjet, he couldn’t have been in New York at seven in the afternoon and Vienna at one in the morning, time zones speaking, at the same time. It’s just not possible.”

“You are sure?” Cat Man asks intently, nearly fall off his seat with how far he’s leaning. “You are _positive_ that Barnes did not commit the bombing?”

“Pretty positive, yeah. I’ve got timestamps, pictures, security tapes from that animal shelter, eyewitness accounts, the whole shebang. They don’t have the money, technology, or reasons to lie. So, you know, pretty sure.”

Cat Man takes off the helmet.

He looks _furious._

“You are telling me —you, Tony Stark— are telling me that I have been hunting _the wrong man?”_

Mr. Stark raises an eyebrow.

Peter has no idea how he doesn’t look afraid in the face of Cat Man’s righteous fury.

“Yes, Your Highness. I’m telling you that you’ve been hunting the wrong guy.”

Cat Man seethes. “Then why was he in Germany? Why did he _run?”_

“That was—” Peter stifles a flinch under Cat Man— _Your Highness?_ —’s sudden, complete, and absolute attention. “That was my idea, actually. His job was to find Captain Rogers, for help. My job was to talk to Mr. Stark and get him to listen.”

“Your _job?”_

“He’s my friend,” Peter responds under the full weight of Cat Man’s gaze, jaw tensing. “And I promised I would help him. I don’t— I don’t break my promises, _Your_ _Highness.”_

Cat Man mugs at him. “But why did he _run?”_

Peter’s scars itch and burn with a thousand volts.

“If you were being hunted, wouldn’t you?” He asks, and it comes out far too quiet in the silence of the quinjet.

He feels very small, surrounded by all these giants.

All the eyes on him feel so heavy.

Feel like the world pushing down on his shoulders one more time.

Cat Man and the Black Widow’s are the heaviest of them all.

“I suppose so,” she says into the ringing silence, voice like velvet and twice as soft.

He wonders if she knows.

If she knows his face and his name and the horns he hasn’t been wearing, if she knows about the burns on his body and the bounty on his head.

He thinks Clint knows.

He thinks Clint knows but just never says anything.

He’s good like that.

“You have arrived at the Flughafen Leipzig-Halle,” FRIDAY says pleasantly into the lead atmosphere. “Another quinjet has been detected on the premises.”

Mr. Stark is the first to look away.

“Thanks, FRI.” He picks up his briefcase from next to the seat he hadn’t sat in almost the whole ride, and it splits open before starting to encase in him red and gold. “Alright, kiddies, lets suit up and head out and try not to destroy an airport.”

“I make no promises,” the Black Widow says dryly, and Mr. Stark cracks a smile.

It looks tired.

Everything about these people looks tired.

Peter leaves his jacket in his seat and webs up and out of the quinjet as Cat Man puts his helmet back on.

The new com in his mask crackles to life. “Where you goin’, Underoos?”

“Listening for the sound of Bucky’s arm.” He answers distractedly. “It’s distinctive.”

 _“Listening?”_ Colonel Rhodes asks, and he’s lost almost all inflection in his voice.

“I got good ears, Colonel Rhodes. You seeing Captain Rogers on the runway?” Peter questions as he slips onto the roof of the airport.

There’s almost no sound in the building besides the power cables and the plumbing, and even then, it feels more like a warehouse than something that normally holds thousands of people every hour.

It’s empty.

It’s dead.

Mr. Stark snorts. “Yeah, I got eyes on Stars and Stripes.”

… except for two heartbeats.

Except for a metallic shuffling and a soft whirring.

“Found him.” Peter whispers. “He’s with somebody else in the building itself. They’ve got something big and metal with them.”

“You know where the weight’s centered?”

He tilts his head down and tries to drown out the sound of Colonel Rhodes and Mr. Stark’s suits.

If he listens closely he can… 

_Bones popping and muscles flexing and the serrated sound of layers of metal all shifting together along someone’s spine and electricity buzzing and water rushing and—_

“Back. It’s on their back.”

“Wilson then.” Mr. Stark says absently.  
“The Falcon?”

“You know any other Wilsons that would fight with Steve, kid?

“No.”

“There you go.” Mr. Stark pauses, and Peter can hear his thrusters cut out. “Get ready for my signal, kid.”

“Roger.”

Peter closes his eyes and tries to do a head count.

He knows where Mr. Stark and Colonel Rhodes are, can hear their suits, but everyone else is a bit more tricky. He thinks he can hear Cat Man’s claws to his left, far off and behind a plane, and the Black Widow’s bites are crackling along the path to the other quinjet. The Vision’s been pretty silent the whole way, but Peter can hear the organic machinery clicking in his body, and the sound of his cape snapping.

As far as the other team goes, he’s got ears on Bucky’s arm and the Falcon’s jetpack. He can see Captain Rogers but he can also hear how heavy his heartbeat is, and the metal from his shield makes the air sing when it moves around. There’s something electric on the shield that he can quiet place, and he thinks that there might be two more heartbeats higher up and across from him. The soft squeak of new leather and the twang of—

The twang of a bowstring.

Peter strains his ears and maybe—

The click of hearing aids being adjusted.

The rattle of arrows in a quiver.

Well.

Heck.

Mr. Stark is still talking to Captain Rogers, and if he flicked on the coms and kept it open, he could probably hear it.

He doesn't.

For all his investment, this all really isn't Peter's fight.

Mr. Stark makes a big gesture and Captain Rogers lowers his shield just a little bit.

Oh wait, no, there it goes. Captain Roger’s raises his shield again.

Mr. Stark takes a step back, hands raised in a placating gesture, and Captain Rogers jabs a finger at him, one arm going wide.

Then–

"Underoos."

Peter throws out two lines: one at the nearest plane wing, and the other at Captain Rogers' shield.

He lands on the wing easily.

"So we're _not_ resolving this peacefully?" He dares to ask.

Captain Rogers twitches over to face him, almost violently so.

He's just gonna start lowering his voice even more if people are gonna keep reacting like that.

Goddamn.

Mr. Stark exhales heavily through his nose.

"We're getting there," he grits out. "God– damn it, will you just _listen?"_

"People don't change overnight, Tony." Captain Rogers says, and _shit_ , why do all of these people sound so fucking _tired?_

"I _know_ that, I have several weeks in a _cave_ to attest to that, but I'm _trying,_ Steve." Mr. Stark hisses. "I'm trying, and if you don't let me help you, you and your merry band of idiots are going to get _thrown in the RAFT."_

Captain Rogers' face darkens.

"Is that a threat?" He asks, voice low and fists curled and Peter thinks that he would probably get along with Matt like a house on fire.

Mr. Stark scowls. "It's a–"

"Warning." Peter interrupts. "It's a warning, Captain Rogers. There's no way for you to come outta this conflict winning, not without help. Mr. Stark is trying to get revisions put in place for the Accords–” he adds with a pointed glare “–but right now you and your team are effectively _war criminals._ Like, some _the Punisher_ levels of wanted by the government, except it’s the entire world.”

Captain Rogers doesn’t say anything.

Just _stares_ at Peter.

It’s like he got caught stealing a dead body or something.

Jesus.

“So like, we can stand here and fight or whatever, or we can find the guy that bombed the International Center and get you and your team outta here, cause I’m assuming you guys still don’t wanna sign the Accords.”

“FUCK NO!”

He flinches. “Oh my god is that Clint?”

Captain Rogers lets out a wheeze and suddenly seems a thousand times less intimidating.

“YO KID WHAT’S UP?!”

Peter jabs a thumb over his shoulder at the cell tower.

“I don’t know that man.”

“WOW, so you’re _lying_ to the _elderly_ now?” A voice says right behind him.

Peter reflexively hits him with the shield.

Clint yelps.

It is not at all manly or dignified.

“I’m telling Kate you did that.” 

Clint gasps and reals away. “Oh my god no.”

“I’m telling _Lucky_ you did that.” Peter crows.

“Kid please,” Clint begs, hands clasped in prayer, “they’ll never respect me again.”

Peter pauses for a moment. Then, 

“Kate respects you?”

Clint full body shoves him off the plane wing. “Holy shit get the fuck out, I’m never sending you a meme ever again.”

It’s such a tense situation but–

Peter laughs.

Not for very long, and not very loudly, but he does.

Clint huffs and scrubs at a bruise blooming on his cheek.

“Sorry, Clint,” he apologizes.

Clint scoffs, but he’s smiling.

“No you’re not.”

He smiles back and sees the eyes of his mask squint happily in the reflection of the metal.

“No I’m no– Hey wait no. Important things. _Important things. Helping Bucky things.”_ Peter chants quietly, patting his cheeks. He looks up at Captain Rogers and wow that guy just looks so _confused._ “Captain Rogers, sir, I know Bucky didn’t bomb Vienna, _they know_ that he didn’t bomb Vienna, but we can’t find the guy who did if everybody’s fighting.”

Captain Rogers clenches his jaw and Peter can hear the slight crackle of a com in his helmet.

He doesn’t listen to the words they’re saying.

“Tell him it’s Солнышко.” He pleads softly.

Captain Rogers waits a moment, and then speaks softly into the com.

It seems to stretch into eternity, for all that it's probably just a second.

And then something in his face breaks.

He tilts his head away, and says, “Scott, stand down,” and for a moment, nothing happens.

Then _something_ jumps off his shield, the size of a bug, maybe, before it starts growing into the shape of a person wearing a suit with big red lenses and a silver helmet, and lands a few feet in front of him.

Peter does his best to keep all the screaming on the inside.

He was _right,_ goddamn it!

HA!

Captain Rogers’ eyes are heavy, and his shoulders are still tense, but when he looks at Mr. Stark, it’s like something uncoils.

“You really wanna help?”

Mr. Stark looks very old in that moment.

“It’s all I ever try to do,” he says, so much more quiet than anything he's said before, and Peter’s heart kind of hurts.

Captain Rogers cracks a smile.

It’s the same kind of horrible, tired thing that Mr. Stark flashed earlier.

“We better get you up to speed, then.”

———

Peter forgets that he’s holding Captain Roger’s shield until they’re back at the quinjet and Mr. Stark is spinning some story about how the ‘Rogue Avengers’ were getting away but ‘they’re following in hot pursuit’ and Clint _physically takes it out of his hands._

He can _see_ Bucky laughing at him the moment it registers what’s just happened.

Peter squints down at his arm, and then he looks up at Bucky, still squinting.

“I’ma break your legs old man,” he grouses, and that makes Bucky laugh harder.

The Falcon and Captain Rogers sort of… look on with awe.

With Captain Rogers though, it’s more pained than bewildered.

Bucky smiles with closed lips and crinkled eyes.

“Course you will, малыш дьявол.” He says, voice gentle and overwhelmingly sarcastic.

His nail polish is chipped.

It’s blue this time.

Peter’s gonna break his _fuckin_ legs.

“Wait, wait wait,” Clint suddenly buts in. “You guys are besties?”

Scratch that.

Time for damage control.

He drags a hand down his face and it catches along the fabric of his mask.

Man he just wants to take it off but he also.

Does not trust.

Like _half_ of these people.

“Clint, JB.” Peter introduces tiredly. “JB, Clint.”

Clint looks at Bucky uncomprehending, and then with an obscene amount of dawning understanding.

“Oh my god you’re JB.” He says in a whisper. Then, louder, “Oh my _god,_ you’re _JB!”_

The Black Widow materializes in the space next to Clint’s shoulder.

“You’re the worst spy.” She says dryly.

Clint scoffs.

“I am _not.”_ He defends. “Kid’s just really good at keeping secrets.”

She swivels to look at him and he shrugs.

“It’s why my suit’s so red. It’s full of secrets.”

“And blood.” Bucky muses.

Peter nods solemnly. _"Full_ of blood.”

He pauses as the hanger door snaps shut with a clang.

“Other one probably had a lot more though.” He mutters speculatively.

The Falcon purses his lips in Peter’s general direction.

“I’m concerned for you.” He says matter-of-factly.

He grins even though he knows the Falcon can’t see it.

Kind of a shame.

He’s got a feeling it’s full of teeth.

“Lotta folks are.”

Bucky waps him across the back of the head and he yelps.

“Stop scaring the bird,” he drawls. 

Then he squints, and Peter feels the weight of a thousand judges come down on his neck.

“… You’re supposed to be in AP Chem right now.”

The Black Widow freezes.

Peter leans away.

He can feel the sweat gathering on his palms.

“ … maybe.”

Bucky looms over him like the shadow of the colossus.

“The fuck you not doin’ in AP Chem, kid?”

The Black Widow digs her nails into Clint’s arm and starts whispering to him furiously.

Peter clenches his jaw and mugs at up Bucky.

“Savin’ your ass, grandpa. You still owe me ten dollars and a sandwich.”

Bucky purses his lips.

“… maybe so.” He admits.

Then the Black Widow is suddenly between them, her face startlingly open.

A dim part of him says that it’s probably a mask.

“You’re the Castle kid, aren’t you?” She asks, one hand still on Clint’s arm. “The one that helped Kate?”

Bucky’s eyes snap back to him.

Captain Rogers and the Falcon go still.

He sees Mr. Stark and Colonel Rhodes throw themselves back into the room, and the man that changed sizes —Mr. Lang, who really wanted to just be called Scott— looked up from where he was poking at his helmet with interest.

The only ones that don’t seem to care are the Scarlet Witch, the Vision, and T’Challa —aka Cat Man—, but he thinks that might just be because they don’t understand the ramifications of the name _Castle._

Peter grimaces and tries to make himself small.

“Maybe?”

Whole lotta maybes been goin’ around.

It’s a maybe kind of day.

“Castle?” Bucky asks with a strange rumble to his voice. 

Peter scrunches up like a turtle and tries to melt into his non-existent shell. “Like… _Frank_ Castle?”

Mr. Stark, Colonel Rhodes, and the Falcon all wheeze at the same time, in complete harmony.

 _“Why,”_ Captain Rogers hisses, and Peter is sure that him and Matt can never meet because the world would never be able to handle their combined Irish-Catholic scrutiny.

Mr. Scott Lang just says, “Oh wow,” and nothing else.

Bucky has gone weirdly blank.

“He’s not completely awful?” Peter tries tentatively. “He came to Ben’s funeral, and he didn’t have to. He took me home after me and Kate were gettin’ chased, and only shot Red like, once? And he’s saved Karen maybe three or five times? And Red like twice? He’s not… _absolutely_ terrible, I swear. His dog is really nice. His name is Max.”

“Only shot Red _once,”_ Clint mutters.

“I mean that’s pretty good, considering his track record.”

“I don’t have the energy to deal with this,” Mr. Stark decides, and walks back into the cockpit.

Colonel Rhodes follows him wordlessly.

Bucky has a hand over his mouth.

He closes his eyes.

And takes a deep breath.

And then he looks at Captain Rogers and says, very quietly, “This’s why we can’t have nice things, Steven.”

“How is this my fault?” Captain Rogers scowls.

Bucky blinks, long and slow. “Not sure yet. But it _sounds_ ‘xactly like your brand of bullshit, so I’m assuming it’s _somehow_ your fault.”

“Thanks, Buck. Really feelin’ the love.”

“HEY WAIT YOU KNOW RED.”

Peter jumps away in alarm.

The Black Widow sighs.  
“Worst spy ever.”

———

Seeing all of the sleeping Soldiers, dead in their orange caskets, had been unnerving.

Seeing the face behind all the tragedy, all the red added to the ledger of the world, had been unsettling.

Seeing the murder of Howard and Maria Stark had been _viscreal._

It wasn’t for him.

It wasn’t for him to see, for him to watch, for him to hear.

It wasn’t his moment, his memory, his wound.

That grainy footage, that horrible sound, it hadn’t been for him to know.

Not him.

Not him _ever._

Seeing it had… it had felt like… 

It had felt like he was eleven years old, hiding in a dirty alley.

It had felt like watching a black SUV drive up to a man waiting in the darkness.

It had felt like hearing Anatoly Ranskahov have his skull caved in, life sloping onto the pavement.

It had felt like seeing Ben die all over again, red streaming out into the snow.

And Bucky had–

Peter had never really seen someone wear quite horror until that moment.

And he’d thought T’Challa had looked furious earlier, but really, Peter’s apparently never seen true righteous fury before in his entire life, not until he’d caught sight of Mr. Stark’s face.

Not until he’d seen all of that open grief and _rage._

Part of him wonders if that’s what Ben’s mugger had seen when Peter had cornered him in an alley, horns and fire and hatred, claws dripping and fangs bared, and then he decides that no, he doesn't wonder.

He doesn’t want to know.

He doesn’t want to know what that man had seen, what he had thought and heard and felt when the Antichrist himself had scored his flesh and thrown him onto the stone steps of Ben’s old precinct, _cop killer_ pinned to his ruined shirt.

He doesn’t want to know.

It would probably horrify him.

He tries not to think about that day in general.

It had been the lowest Peter’s ever felt in his entire life.

He firmly pushes the feeling away.

And then he grabs onto Mr. Stark’s suit with both hands and digs his heels in.

He’ll do his best to hold back, to not permanently damage anything, but Bucky is the priority now.

He takes first place.

He’s Peter’s primary concern.

And if he has to shatter Mr. Stark and his suit to do it, then by god he _will,_ but he doesn’t _want to._

Mr. Stark isn’t thinking, not right now.

He’s just reacting.

Peter’s not sure what a guy like Mr. Stark will and won’t regret, but he knows that _he’ll_ regret it for the rest of his life if he doesn’t do something to give Bucky enough time to escape.

So he grits his teeth and throws Mr. Sta as hard as he can across the room.

It’s far easier than it should be.

The metal he hits crunches with the force of the impact.

He has no idea if it’s from the force of his throw or the weight of Mr. Stark’s suit.

Maybe it’s both.

Sparing a glance, he can’t see Zemo or T’Challa anywhere.

He doesn’t have time to worry or care.

“MR. STARK.” He roars with all the force in his body, so loud that it makes his ears hurt, that it echoes in the metal chamber. _“Stand down!”_

And Mr. Stark… doesn’t.

He just pulls himself up from the cracked metal, suit shuddering and crumpled.

Wordless and made of stone.

He meets him head on, and just has to hope that Mr. Stark won’t shoot him point blank.

Peter digs his fingers into the suit, into the _metal,_ and starts pushing him back.

The Black Widow hits Mr. Stark’s suit with two bites, and it loses power long enough for Peter to shove him back and down and into the ground.

His fingers are starting to hurt from the peeling metal.

Peter’s strong.

But he’s not invincible.

The eyes of the faceplate flicker on and off before the power restores and Mr. Stark starts pushing back again.

He decides the black eyes of the Iron Man faceplate are one of the most terrifying things he’s ever seen.

“Tony!” Colonel Rhodes suddenly yells, voice raw and twisted, and Peter wonders if he knew Mr. Stark’s parents, really knew them, before he has his hands full of Arc Reactor powered metal, and he has to push back again. _“Tones!_ Killing Barnes isn’t going to bring them back!”

Peter hears Clint wheezing, chest rattling, and he tries to reason with Mr. Stark too.

“Tony, this won’t _fix anything,”_ he calls, sounding breathless, and Peter wonders when he got thrown into a wall.

The metal of the Iron Man suit starts to groan and buckle.

"Don't kill him Mr. Stark,” Peter begs, and his fingers burn where they’ve begun to fracture. “Mr. Stark, _Tony,_ please, _please_ don't kill him. He's one of my best friends. Killing him won’t solve this!”

It’s like Mr. Stark doesn’t even hear him, even though he’s standing right in front of him.

It’s like he doesn’t even hear any of them.

He can hear Captain Rogers’ teeth click together in a snarl, can see him reflected clearly in the red and gold, and it’s so far from that aching smile earlier that Peter wonders if maybe this is a different person entirely. 

"Goddamnit Tony, I know it hurts, but it won't bring them back! It won’t bring back Howard, it won’t bring back your mother! It won’t bring back _anybody!”_

And that last part sound so broken, so aching, that something in his chest cracks.

Captain Rogers had been at a funeral during the bombing.

How is he still going?

How is he still _breathing._

Mr. Stark’s face is like thunder, just as dark and twice as terrible. "I don't care. _He killed my mom."_

Peter lifts the suit and pushes it back into the Iron Man-shaped wall with a strength he suddenly doesn’t feel.

His eyes burn.

His bruises throb.

Gunshots echo in his ears and they aren’t real.

"And a robber killed my uncle!” He screams, howls, and Mr. Stark stops getting up. “And I have more than enough training, more than enough strength, more than enough wherewithal, _to go and kill him!_ I could've done it right after Ben died, after he _died in my arms_ six months ago, but I didn't! I'm not trying to say my hurts are worse, I'm not trying to guilt trip you, but if I didn't murder my uncle's killer after two days, if Daredevil didn't murder his father's after ten years, then by god, Tony Stark you can pull yourself together and not kill what’s left of the puppet that HYRDA used to kill your parents over twenty _goddamn_ years ago!”

Everything hurts.

Everything stings.

Everything burns.

The gunshots, the car doors, the crackle of a thousand volts, they’ve never been so loud before.

"Don't be like Frank Castle.” He croaks, and it’s like he’s never had a single ounce of strength in his bones his entire life. “Bucky isn't going to hurt anyone else. He never wanted to. Please, Mr. Stark. Please don’t kill him. I can’t bury anyone else. Not again. Not after–” he chokes on the sudden desert in his throat, the dryness of his tongue. _“Not after Ben.”_

Mr. Stark’s suit groans and screams as the crumpled panels grind together, but _goddammit,_ he’s trying to get up again.

Why won’t he just _quit?_

Dimly, Peter registers that that’s a stupid question.

He knows why.

He knows with an aching familiarity why Mr. Stark doesn’t quit.

Why he doesn't stop.

And Peter knows that he isn’t _going_ to stop.

He throws out a web to get close, and kicks Mr. Stark back into the wall.

He isn’t going to stop.

Peter doesn’t want to break him.

Mr. Stark’s not thinking.

He’s lashing out like a wild animal.

So Peter reaches down.

And he rips the Arc Reactor out of the Iron Man suit.

The eyes immediately go dark, like they were never lit at all.

The exposed wires sizzle against his palm.

Mr. Stark’s breathing starts to echo in the suit, so Peter digs his fingers into the face plate and tears it off.

The bones grind together.

It hurts.

Mr. Stark’s face is pale, eyes wide, breath coming out in great heaving gasps.

His eyes are cloudy.

Peter doesn’t think he’s really seeing anything at all.

And then his eyes focus over Peter’s shoulder, still hazy and red.

Captain Rogers’ shoulders shake and shudder with the tears muffled in his throat, but that might just be the trembling of his reflection in Mr. Stark’s suit.

His face, though?

Is one of clear, bleeding, raw _agony._

 _“Please,_ Tony,” he whispers, voice messy and pained and full of _grief._ “He’s the only one left. Peggy’s gone. The Comandos are gone. He’s all that’s left, Tony. He’s the only one left. And I’m still here.”

He breathes out so heavy it echoes with the weight of the world.

“He’s my friend, Tony.”

Mr. Stark’s lungs heave and rattle and shake with every breath he takes, and Peter wants to cover his ears and never hear the sound of it ever again.

It sounds like he’s sobbing without breathing.

The Arc Reactor is burning through his suit like a sparkler.

He understands why they’re all so tired now.

He understands.

And then Mr. Stark says, “I was your friend, too.”

And then he looks away.

And then he digs his fingers into the ground.

And then he snarls, _“Go.”_

———

Watching T’Challa’s ship fly away with Captain Rogers’ team, with Bucky, with Clint, is like grieving for someone that isn’t dead.

Zemo stands like a solitary dark pillar against the white backdrop, hands bound and mouth firmly shut.

There’s a gun on the ground, half buried in the snow.

He can taste the gunpowder in the air.

He hadn’t heard it go off.

T’Challa stands with a hand firmly on his neck.

He’s not wearing his helmet.

Peter wonder’s what it’s like to just– do that.

To bare your face to the world without fear of repercussions.

To have people know your name.

To not be _afraid._

What a novel concept.

Mr. Stark has Peter and Mr. Scott Lang hide out of sight when Ross calls.

He doesn’t hear most of the conversation, mostly because he chooses not to, but he definitely catches words like _‘major revisions’_ and _‘talking to your superiors’_ and _‘real culprit’_ which make something in his chest smooth out from the jagged glass it was.

He’s getting tired.

He wonders and wonders and wonders if it’s the cold this time or just the bruises on his ribs and the mild concussion in his head.

He’s been doing a lot of wondering lately.

There’s not a lot else to do.

There’s so much that he just doesn’t know.

So much that he doesn’t understand.

Peter feels kind of like the main character in a video game.

He’s come so far, and yet, he still understand’s nothing.

He wonders about that too.

He wonders if that’s okay.

About where to draw the line between ignorance and simply not knowing yet.

It feels like a thin one.

The Black Widow watches him from where she stands in the quinjet, out of the snow, and it’s only when T’Challa hands off Zemo that she looks away.

Then T’Challa _walks up to_ _him,_ throwing Peter out of his thoughts, and grabs him by the forearm.

He grabs back on reflex.

“Thank you,” he says to Peter’s stunned silence. “For stopping me from killing an innocent man, and helping me find the real culprit.”

Peter almost chokes under the sincerity, under the soft eyes and gentle voice.

He’s so ridiculously _non-aggressive_ now that Peter is having a hard time reconciling this quiet man with the one that tore the quinjet’s armrests to shreds.

“You’re welcome,” he hears himself respond, head dipping and grip tightening.

It seems to be the right thing to do, because T’Challa does the same before letting go.

“You have done my people a great service this day,” he says earnestly, and Peter’s heart rate starts to spike. He can’t handle compliments. He’ll die. “Should you ever wish to see Barnes, you need only ask.”

He pauses.

“I also heard that you knocked out the AI that man's Stark’s tower. That is very impressive for a teenager, considering Stark tech is some of the most advanced in the western world.” T’Challa squints at him, and Peter feels like he’s going to combust. “My sister would probably love to meet you.” 

Then he frowns.

“She can never know,” T’Challa mutters gravely.

“I, uh,” Peter chokes on his tongue. “Okay? Thank you?”

T’Challa nods solemnly.

“You are welcome. I will make sure to give you a simple Kimoyo bead before I head back to Wakanda.”

Peter has no idea what that means.

He thanks T’Challa anyway, and then the man walks away.

His black suit stands out against the snow like a cloud against the too-bright sun.

Peter hears the snow crunch behind his back, smells the gun oil and battery-acid bloom of fresh bruises, and tries not to tense when the Black Widow stops at his shoulder.

“Do you realize what it is that you’ve managed to do?” She asks the frozen tundra.

Peter risks a glance.

Her eyes are firmly fixed on the horizon.

“No.” He says to the wilderness. “Explain it for me? … Please?”

She smiles.

He wonders if it’s fake.

If it’s like Matt’s smiles when he tries to breathe past the screaming in the world, if it’s like Foggy’s smiles when he tries to understand why Matt did what he did, if it’s like May’s smiles when she tries to pretend that everything is still okay, if it’s like Mr. Stark’s smile when he says that they tracked the Rogue Avengers to Siberia before losing them in the tundra, but _hey_ they also found the man responsible for the bombing and wouldn’t you know it wasn’t Barnes?

The Black Widow rocks on her heels, her breath fogging in the air.

“In the course of one meeting, you changed the world.”

He looks away.

Her words feel like they’ve burned him to the bone.

“I really didn’t,” He says to the sky and the rocks and the snow. “All I did was help my friend.”

She hums.

“By using one man to move the world.”

“I just asked for help.”

The Black Widow looks at him, both eyes on his mask, on his face, and it’s like she can see right through him.

“A lot of people ask Tony for help,” she says so very quietly. “But you’re still the one that he actually listened to.”

“Because I made him.”

“Kid,” the Black Widow smiles, all teeth and a thousand times more real, “You can’t make Tony Stark listen to anything he doesn’t want to even if you put a gun to his head.”

He clenches his fists, and her hand finds his shoulder.

He closes his eyes.

And she whispers, “They’d be so proud of you Peter.”

——–

Mr. Stark offers him a paid internship before dropping him off at his apartment complex.

Peter says that he’ll think about it and watches the nice, sleek car drive away, standing on the sidewalk and covered in bruises, with a new dent in his shoulder blade from where Captain Rogers clipped him with his shield.

He’s tired.

He feels kind of good anyway.

He turns away.

Walking up the stairs to his and May’s apartment has never taken so much energy before.

She’s not home yet, and he unlocks the door with shaky hands, keys rattling.

It’s never felt so nice to be home.

To be back in his city.

He lets his backpack fall to the floor, and sniffs around the kitchen.

He leaves with a glass of orange juice and finds an empty slice of wall.

He feels tired.

He feels tired like Mr. Stark and Captain Rogers looked tired.

He also feels kind of fantastic.

Because the world had been on fire, and he’d finally done something to smother the flames.

Because he hadn’t been small, or little, or _weak._

He’d been good.

He’d been smart.

He’d been _enough._

Peter leaves the empty glass on the counter and goes to find painkillers.

It feels like there’s been a weight lifted from between his shoulders.

Like maybe he’s finally done something right.

Like maybe he’s starting to make up for what happened to Ben.

He finds the good painkillers tucked behind the pipes and under the sink where he stashed them.

He wonders if Ben would be proud of what he’s doing.

Of what he’s done.

Peter would like to think that he would be.

That he’d see Peter take his words to heart.

That he’d see Peter try to honor him the only way he knows how.

He takes a moment to add a new stone to Ben’s shrine and tweak the quartz in the kitchen.

Ben said that with great power comes great responsibility,

Peter knows.

And he’s doing his best to do right by him now when he’s already failed so damn hard.

He’s doing his best to stop what happened to Ben, what happened to him and May, what happened to _Matt and Jack Murdock,_ from happening to as many people as he can.

You can’t save everyone.

He learned that when Hell’s Kitchen went up in flames.

But he can still _try._

And this time, he did save somebody.

He wasn’t too late.

Bucky lived.

Bucky survived.

Bucky’s finally getting real, actual _help._

It feels good.

It feels great.

He closes his door and scrounges around for his headphones.

Germany had taken a day and a half.

His Sunday and his Monday.

He’s got school tomorrow.

Peter thinks that he’s going to take a mental health day, or call in sick.

He finds the playlist he wanted and curls up on his bed.

He’s tired.

Bucky’s getting help.

The Accords are getting scrutinized under a thousand eyes.

He might be finally getting a good job to help pay his and May’s bills.

Things are looking up, even if it’s just for a moment.

Things are getting better, even if it doesn't last.

Peter presses play, the music starting to drift in.

He stares at the ceiling.

And covers his eyes.

And finally lets himself just _breathe._

Absolution tastes like orange juice and freezing, tundra air.

Coincidentally, absolution also tastes like victory.


	2. The Depths of the Pit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And the thing about the Devil is that he used to be God's favorite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'The Depths of the Pit' is where Lucifer fell when he was cast from Heaven, and two alt titles for this chapter were "Fear the Collapse" and "Fall From Heaven"  
> It's been a while since we've done Matt's POV lads and I have MISSED IT

There's something horrible about earthquakes.

Not horrible as in bad, but horrible as in  _ unknowable. _

All encompassing.

Overwhelming.

The earth moves beneath Matt’s feet, and the brick and mortar, and the steel, and the glass, it all rattles and shakes and shatters; the ground roars like thunder and the people around him  _ scream,  _ a thousand colors and a thousands sounds.

There's acid green and rotted trees, bloody yellow and burning tar, and a twisted, broken choir for all the world's angels to hear.

Earthquakes drown everything out until there's nothing but the deep rattle in his chest that he can hear and feel with his whole body.

They make it impossible to move, to think, to process anything but the undeniable, and very real fear, that  _ you are going to die. _

Like when a car doesn't stop and you’re sure that it’s going to hit you.

He’s never liked earthquakes.

They’re right up there with hospitals, except with earthquakes, they turn the entire world into a graveyard.

The first he ever felt was in 2002, with barely any damage at all.

Just a slight, quieted discomfort in the earth.

A distortion in his balance, a pressure in his ears.

For the entire duration he hadn’t been able to even move.

Just the thought, just  _ thinking,  _ had made him nauseous.

This one is so much worse.

It’s the entire world moving, shaking, shuddering along the shifting bones of the planet.

It's like his home is falling down his ears, and then clicks that it might actually, really be falling.

_ Everything _ is falling.

_ Everything _ is breaking.

The world is on fire.

Hell’s Kitchen is screaming.

And when the shaking stops, when the thunder quiets and the roaring dulls,  _ it’s still screaming. _

He’s been hiding for so long.

He’s been laying low, been keeping his head down, been going to his nice pretty office job, taking cases pro bono when he could, but it’s not enough.

It was never enough.

It’ll never  _ be  _ enough.

When he stands on the roof, the city spread before him, the howling in his ears, he knows that this is his breaking point.

The car alarms, the unanswered calls, the whimpers from the rubble and the shattering of glass down the streets, the cocking of guns and the cloying scent of copper, it all twists and curls and slithers into his head, into his heart, into his bones.

This is his breaking point.

He hears glass shatter, hears a gun loaded, hears feet hit the pavement and hearts jump into throats, and he doesn’t stop himself this time.

He doesn’t wait for sirens that won’t come, not here, not now.

Not ever again.

Matt finally lets himself act.

And for the first time in months, Daredevil leaps across the rooftops of Hell’s Kitchen.

———

Peter calls him, bright and early with the sun while Matt is still trying to wash away the blood.

He sounds exhausted.

Matt thinks that it’s probably because he was up all night dealing with the earthquake too.

It rings twice before he picks up.

“Are you okay?” Is the first thing Peter asks.

Matt pushes his table back into place.

“I’m fine. Are you alright?”

Peter hums.

“I’m okay. I was on the island when the earthquake happened, so I was pretty busy all night, but May says…” he trails off, and his breathing sound stressed over the line. “I talked to May, and she said that Queens didn’t feel the earthquake. At all.”

There’s still glass on the floor, and it crunches under Matt’s feet as he goes to find the small first aid kit.

The brick is settling with the building differently now, faint air whistling through in a jagged line.

Matt runs his fingers along the cracked mortar.

It feels just like the walls at Saint Agnes.

Broken and settled wrong, creaking and singing in the wind, the cold seeping in through the jagged pieces.

He broke two of his fingers on one of those walls, right after Stick left.

Matt pulls his hand away and moves farther into the kitchen, toward the cabinets.

He’ll have to get that fixed.

“Are you sure?” Matt asks quietly, and kicks a broken piece of what might plaster out of his way.

Peter’s breathing sounds rough over the phone.

He probably wore his binder too long.

Maybe he just really hasn’t slept at all.

Might be both, knowing him.

“I asked Michelle and Ned, too.” He responds. “And the team before school. The only place it hit was Manhattan.”

Then Peter hesitates.

Matt can hear his breath hitch and stutter over the line.

And then he finally says, “Normal earthquakes aren’t supposed to do that, Matt. That’s not how faultlines work, I’m pretty sure.’’

Matt sets the first aid kit on the counter and pretends that his hands aren’t shaking, that the shotgun blast isn’t still rattling in his head.

If he hadn’t moved, if Daredevil hadn’t  _ run,  _ two more people would be dead.

And the murderers wouldn’t have cared.

“Yeah?” He asks, and is proud of how the tremor in his body doesn’t bleed into his voice.

Peter exhales and stays silent for a long moment.

“I have a bad feeling about this, Matt. Like the Accords, but. Worse. Like the Accords but a  _ thousand  _ times worse. I don’t like it, Matty.”

He inhales sharply, the skin over his knuckles pulling taught, before exhaling as slowly as he can, and it takes every ounce of control in his body not to throw everything off his counter.

To just breathe and not  _ destroy _ _. _

“Okay.”

“You’ll be careful, won’t you?” Peter asks quietly. “Or, well, as careful as you can be?”

Matt drags a hand down his face before linking his fingers behind his neck.

One of his neighbors is dead, and another is missing, that he knows of.

There’s broken glass and plaster all over his floor.

For the first time since he moved in, the billboard across from his apartment doesn’t have power.

Last night, the ground shook, and rattled, and ruined.

And if it wasn’t a normal earthquake, if it wasn’t just shitty luck, if it was done  _ on purpose…  _

Matt’s not sure what he’s going to do.

He hasn’t worn the suit in so long.

He’s been so careful, for his sake, for Peter’s.

But if there’s someone out there, in his city, with enough power to make the earth move, to shake the skyscrapers, then he doesn’t think he can stand by.

He doesn’t think he can block out the sirens.

Not anymore.

“Yeah,” Matt says, instead of the million other things he should, “I’ll be careful.”

———

Matt was not careful.

Matt was not careful  _ at all. _

‘Just be Jessica Jones’ attorney’, Foggy said.

‘It’ll be easy’, Foggy said.

`It totally won’t end up with you tailing a PI and showing up at Midland Circle Financial, a pretty white building built on the corpse of Mrs. Cardenas’,  _ Foggy didn’t actually say but was heavily implied in the silence. _

_ No, _ not at  _ all. _

And it  _ certainly _ won’t end with you fighting the Hand with Jessica Jones, a man that’s bullet proof, a guy that gives off stupid heat waves from his fist, and finding out along the way that the woman you buried is very much not dead and wants to kill you.

Matt was not careful, to put it lightly.

And to say the least, he’s having a bad night.

And that’s  _ before  _ they bulldozed into a Chinese restaurant.

“We’re closed.” A man at the counter says as they flood in, and Matt ignores him.

He’d heard the sign flip, and there’s the sound of dishes being washed in the kitchen, but the lights are still on.

“We need to kill the lights,” Matt warns as Jessica rushes through the door, the stinging smell of alcohol and wool in her wake, and he locks it behind her.

“How do you even know they're on?” She hisses, and he ignores that too, moving onto the blinds.

The guy with the heat waves, who he thinks is wearing a suit, judging from the sound of a tie, talks to the owner(?), who shakes his head and threatens to call the police.

“You can't do that.” The bulletproof man says, low and steady, and Matt is marginally sure that he’s Luke Cage, the hero of Harlem and Foggy’s latest client. “You'd be putting the cops in danger.”

“I'll put you in danger.” The owner hisses behind him, and Matt thinks the shift in the air is him jabbing a finger at heat wave guy.

He can hear Jessica grind her teeth before snarling, “I'm done explaining this.”

And then she upends the table by the wall and pushes it over the door.

Matt dimly wonders if she’s as strong as Peter.

The owner whispers something in Chinese, he thinks, Mandarin, maybe? And heat wave guy exhales softly with what sounds like a grin, saying, “Whoa! She is very strong.”

Matt holds back a snort.

No shit.

He extends a hand towards the owner, scarf still over his face, and tries to keep his voice as calm as possible. “Sir, this is for your protection. We need this place to look closed.”

The owner says something in Chinese again, and even Matt can tell he sounds distressed.

Then heat wave guy gently grabs him by the arm, steering him away and speaking in the same language.

Jessica makes a strange noise in the back of her throat and whispers, “You speak Chinese?”

He says something back and keeps walking with the owner.

Matt twists his head away.

There’s too many things happening at once.

He can’t afford to focus on one thing, can’t afford to not pay attention to everything around him.

There’s no time for filtering tonight.

“I still hear neon,” he calls, and tries to find the buzzing.

Luke Cage makes a sort of– startled scoffing noise?

“Who hears neon?” He mutters, incredulous.

Jessica sighs, and it rattles all the way to her lungs.

“My blind-but-maybe-not lawyer.”

Wow.

So much for keeping a secret.

God _ damn. _

Luke Cage doesn’t breathe for a good long hot second. “You're what? What do you mean he's blind?”

Matt clenches his jaw and pulls down another set of blinds over the windows.

Everyone always fucking doubts he’s blind.

If he wasn’t, then why the hell would he pretend to be?

Jessica shakes her head. “I don't know. I thought he was sent to spy on me, and now I'm not so sure.”

The back of Matt’s neck burns with their stares.

Really?   
Sent to  _ spy on her? _

He’s a  _ lawyer. _

Who has that kind of time?

“You think he's on our side?” Luke Cage asks, voice soft.

Jessica’s head swivels to look at him, and if Matt knows anything about her at that point, it’s that she’s probably got an eyebrow raised in question. 

“Our side of what?”

Luke looks away and doesn’t say anything.

Matt pulls down the last of the blinds over the windows and crosses the room to check the back.”

“Who's Karate Kid?” Jessica questions instead.

Luke Cage sighs through his nose.

“Danny Rand.” He says, and he sounds about as tired as Matt does when he _ all he wants _ is for Peter to  _ go to sleep,  _ he has  _ multiple stab wounds,  _ and  _ no healing factor  _ good _ night. _

At least he has a  _ name _ for the guy now though.

“Boy billionaire?”

Matt stops paying attention to their conversation after that, moving further into the back and checking the doors.

It’s not a vital conversation, but it does at least tell him that Jessica and Luke Cage know each other, Luke Cage doesn’t trust him and neither does Jessica, and the fourth member of their party is the eclectic billionaire Daniel Rand.

Lovely.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, silenced and turned to low, and Matt answers it quickly, stalking along the wall.

“Hello?”

“I heard shots from Midland Circle while I was doing my rounds,” says Peter’s voice, slightly muffled by his mask.

Right.

It’s his patrol hours right now.

“And you assumed I was involved?”

“Were you?”

“Maybe.”

Peter is silent for a moment.

“Is this something I want to get involved in?”

Matt rubs his jaw and prods at the bruises.

“I’d prefer if you didn’t. But it’s big stuff, involves everyone, so you should probably know the basics.”

The line is quiet again.

“How big?” He asks, voice hushed.

Matt shuts the latch on the back door and leans his forehead against it.

“The Hand is back.”

Peter doesn’t say anything again.

And then he whispers, “Okay,” and just. 

Hangs up.

his phone buzzes almost instantly.

_ Where are you. _

Matt texts back  _ No. _

Peter’s next message is  _ Fine, be that way.  _

Then,  _ You can’t hide forever, Devil Man. _

Matt sends him a  _ Wait until it’s clear  _ and puts his phone away.

It buzzes seconds after he slides it into his pocket.

Most likely an all-capital  _ NO. _

He probably has about ten minutes.

If Peter knows the point of origin, he should be able to track him fairly easily, so.

Matt guesses this is a Spider-man problem now, God help them all.

He sweeps back into the main room and up to where Jessica and Luke are still standing.

“All right, back door is clear. Everything's locked. I think we're safe for now.”

Luke Cage’s shoulders go tense as he turns to properly face him.

“So we're just gonna wait it out here?”

Matt clenches his jaw.

“You got a better plan?”

Jessica tilts her head side to side, and he’s guessing she trades glances with Luke Cage.

“Is there a plan where I get my scarf back?”

Matt sighs.

Do these–

Do these people not understand secret identities?

Do they not understand that if he showed his face he would be disbarred and probably arrested?   
That  _ Foggy  _ would be disbarred and probably arrested?

Well.

No, actually, because they don’t know who he is, besides Jessica, but that’s not really.

The  _ point. _

“I just need it till this is over.” He says instead of all of those other things, and adjusts his tie. “You two know each other?”

He thinks Jessica trades another glance with Luke Cage.

He can hear the sounds of things moving in the kitchen again.

“Yeah.” She says wearily.

Matt tilts his head. “How?”

“We met.” Jessica drawls, an undercurrent of  _ something  _ in her voice that he can’t quite pin down. “We drank. I shot him in the head.”

Matt laughs, just a little.

“Why are you still wearing that thing?” Luke Cage suddenly asks, and the levity in Matt’s chest curls and withers and dies.

_ Because when my father didn’t throw his fight they knew exactly who to shoot. _

_ Because if people see my face it’ll ruin my life. _

_ Because the day my names are put together in the headlines is the day everyone I care about dies. _

Matt doesn’t say any of these things.

“It's–” 

“Okay.” Danny Rand says brightly. “He says we can stay.”

“What’d you tell him?” Luke Cage asks.

He shifts uncomfortably. “Uh, I just gave him my black card, agreed to pay the rent for the next six months.” He chuckles but it sounds kind of forced.

Yikes.

Poor little baby ninja bird.

With more money than Matt can even  _ dream  _ about.

Then he sticks his hand out towards Jessica, and she takes it mechanically, like she’s still trying to process what he just said.

“Hey, I'm, uh, I'm Danny.”

“Jessica.”

He swivels to face Matt.

“And, uh, you are?”

Jesus, this kid is awkward.

Matt takes a deep steadying breath and rubs under his eyes beneath the scarf.

Shit.

He’s really getting back into this, isn’t he?

Everything in him boils at the thought of just  _ handing out his name,  _ but if Peter could figure out the connections at age  _ eleven,  _ along with Jessica already knowing, there’s very little chance that they  _ aren’t  _ going to walk away with his name and his face anyway.

Damnit.

He digs his fingers into the knot and pulls the scarf off.

He immediately hates it.

“Matthew. I prefer Matt. Call me Matty and I’ll break your arm.”

Danny shakes his hand easily.

For all that he’s apparently shit at business, he’s got a good handshake.

It’s the little things.

“No last name?” Luke Cage asks.

“I’m branching very far out of my comfort zone right now.” Matt warns. “Don’t push it.” 

“Well I, for one, am _very_ far out of my comfort zone,” Jessica drawls, hands clasped. “Seeing as how I almost got murdered by ninjas tonight.”

Matt wrinkles his nose. “You get used to it, unfortunately.”

Luke Cage’s breathing pauses for a moment. “You know those guys?”

Matt feels an uncomfortable laugh bubble up in his chest, and pushes it down with all his strength.

Hahaha

Does he know those guys?

_ Haha ha h a. _

“Jesus, Murd– Matt, you look like you’re about to start– crying? Laughing?” Jessica asks.

“Do I  _ know them?”  _ He finally manages between coughs. "God, yeah, I guess you could say that."

She exhales loudly, not quite a sigh, alcohol on her breath, and one of her hands gestures limply through the air. "Would you like to share with the class, counselor?"

"They call themselves the Hand." Danny quickly answers for him.

People are moving in the kitchen, and he can smell food now.

Weren’t they closing?

Jessica's silent for a moment. Then she scoffs.

"What are they really called?"

Matt coughs. "No, he's… he's right."

Luke Cage sighs and breathes deep through his nose. "You crossed paths with them before, too?"

Danny shrugs.

"It's kind of my life's purpose to destroy them."

Jessica snorts. "No shit?"

"Yeah."

Luke Cage snaps his fingers, and they all swivel to face him.

"When'd you meet them, Matt?"

He makes a face.

"Couple years ago. They wanted to get their hands on Midland Circle."

"Define  _ couple years ago."  _ Jessica asks.

Matt waves his hand side to side. "After the Incident and a bit past Frank Castle v. The People."

There's a moment of silence where that sinks in, and then Jessica and Luke inhale at the same time as they put together the pieces.

He's getting confused puppy vibes from Danny.

Matt does jazz hands.

He feels like Peter would be proud and Foggy would smack his arm.

"We, uh…” Danny’s head swishes side to side for a moment, looking at all three of them, before clearing his throat. “We need to figure out our next move."

It rings awkward in the silence, but only for a moment.

“We?” Luke asks.

“Yeah no, Karate Kid,” Jessica says, shoulders tensing. “They came at us, we fought our way out. Let's call it professional courtesy. End of story.”

Danny shakes his head, frustration rolling off him in waves, like burning sand. “Look, it's not that simple.” His hand reaches out to gesture, and even though she’s out of range, Jessica automatically curls around and away. It looks natural. Matt knows it’s not.

“These people, they're dangerous.” Danny says, voice grave with old hurt.

Jessica’s teeth click together in a snarl.  _ “So am I. _ Now, somebody tell me what I need to know about the Hand, so I can be on my way.”

There’s a quiet clattering from the back of the restaurant, and then people start moving back into the dining room, plates balanced on their arms, and Matt moves to face them.

Jessica, Luke, and Danny twitch and follow his turn.

Luke throws out a hand at the servers, head tilted down to look at Danny.

Well, him or the fish tank along the wall dividing the kitchen from the dining room.

The angle is kinda… weird.

“What is that?”

Danny automatically goes very relaxed and loose, and Matt wonders if that’s his version of tensing up.

“Oh.” He says soft. “Um, as, uh, as part of the deal, he made me order four of everything.”

“Ah,” Matt breathes. “Well, that’s good. I guess.”

Peter does eat a lot, and if Danny’s already ordered so much food… 

Luke exhales heavily through his nose. “We're not here to  _ eat.” _

Danny stares him in the face for a moment before turning away, and instead says, “Uh, are those pork?”

Matt sniffs the air for a moment and tries to follow the movement of his arm.

“No, they're shrimp.”

Danny kind of deflates.

“Oh.”

Another server enters the room.

“Oh. This guy's got pork.”

He pops right back up again, like a little daisy.

“Ah, great!” Danny says, rubbing his hands together before starting towards the table.

Luke follows right after him, then Jessica passes Matt, sighing.

“God, you're weird.”

He shrugs.

Then–

_ Ah. _

“There he is.” Matt tilts his head away and towards the sound, and then there’s another one, of web snapping against glass.

Jessica stops.

“There  _ who  _ is?” She asks loud enough that both Danny and Luke look up.

Instead of answering, Matt whistles.

Jessica immediately clamps her hands over her ears and Danny flinches violently away.

Luke doesn’t do anything.

Matt stops whistling, and there’s silence for a moment.

Then there’s webs hitting glass again, this time moving in a steady line.

Jessica rips her hands off her ears and jabs one at him.

“Was that a fucking  _ Death Knell,  _ Murdock?”

“A  _ what?”  _ Danny hisses.

“It’s what the Devil and Prince of Hell’s Kitchen used to do to find each other,” Luke answers lowly, “or when they needed help.”

“Ding ding ding,” Matt says distractedly, spinning slowly to find the proper direction.

“Who’s the Prince of Hell’s Kitchen?” Danny asks with irritation.

Huh.

Zero to sixty with that guy.

Luke clicks his tongue. “The Devil’s protege. You didn’t know?”   
“I barely know about the Devil, Luke. I’ve read like one article about how he was gone, and another about how he put away Wilson Fisk. I was living on another plane of existence for fifteen years, and then I was traveling around the world for five or so months.”

“Sounds like a rich white boy problem.” Luke says.

“I was living on another plane of existence because the Hand  _ murdered my parents.”  _ Danny stresses.

Luke hums. “So you’re an  _ orphan _ rich white boy.”

_ “Luke.” _

“You got dead parents. That doesn’t make you special. Lots of people got dead parents.”

“I got a dead dad,” Matt says. “And a walk-out mom.”

“My entire family died in a car wreck.” Jessica says.

“See?” Luke gestures towards them. “They’re orphans too.”

The air vent pops open, grate clattering to the floor.

All three of them flinch towards it, and Matt steps in front of them, holding out an arm.

Peter hops out, silhouette sleek and a bag on his back that rattles like kevlar.

He smells like faint gunpowder and rain.

“How do you do, fellow orphans?”

———

“I heard he just disappeared.” Danny says into his food, and Peter tenses up.

Matt puts a hand on his shoulder and steers him back to his rice.

“That's not exactly how it happened.” He answers vaguely and Peter curls into his rice instead of eating it. “Stop that.”

Peter makes a grumbling sound in his throat. “But Matt–”   
“No.”

“Would you j–”

“I said no. Not your fault. Stop.”

“But if I hadn’t–”

_ “Kid.” _

Peter gives up and shovels a handful of rice into his mouth instead.

He can hear fabric still bunching around his jaw, so the mask must still be on, just pulled over his nose to eat. 

“Thank you.”

“You see the small child too, right?” Luke stage whispers to Jessica across the table.

She nods wearily. “I knew he was young but I didn’t realize he was still a  _ baby.” _

Peter bristles.

“I’m not a baby. I stopped an eighteen-wheeler last week.”

“You stopped a  _ what?” _

“You stopped an  _ eighteen-wheeler?”  _ Matt cuts in.

“It was on the news, Matthew.” Peter says.

“I don’t watch the news.

“You don’t  _ watch _ anything.”

Matt gasps. “Wow, is this what it feels like to be an only child?”

“It just doesn't make any sense.” Danny exclaims suddenly. “What do you mean you're Daredevil?”

Matt clenches his jaw, just a bit, and turns his attention back to Danny.

“It's a long story.” He says calmer than he feels. “One I'd rather not tell. More importantly, it's a secret I keep not just for the sake of protecting myself, but also for the people that I love.”

Luke nods along to everything he says as he’s speaking. “Okay. I get that.”

Matt shakes his head. “Good.”

Danny exhales through his nose, frustrated. “I don't. You're blind.”

And Matt…

Matt doesn’t think he says it to be mean.

From what he’s gathered, he doesn’t think that Danny is an intentionally malicious person.

It still feels like an insult instead of a fact.

Matt’s been blind for over twenty years.

Maybe one day he’ll get over other people pointing it out.

“Yeah, well, sight is overrated.” Is what he says instead.

Then he pushes Peter’s chair past the tipping point from where he was rocking back on two legs, and listens to it hit the ground with a thump.

Peter hisses from the ceiling and Matt takes a bite of his food to distract himself.

“Don’t rock on the back legs if you don’t wanna get tipped, brat. And if it wasn’t obvious, I get along just fine without it.”

He can tell he’s being glared at, and ignores it.

Danny is staring at Peter on the ceiling with probably fascination?

Luke is steadfastly ignoring it and Jessica has her hands… cupped around her eyes? Over them?

Whatever.

Also ignoring it.

Peter drops back onto the floor and picks his chair up, muttering and probably mugging at Matt the entire time.

“Stop swearing in Russian.”

Peter switches languages.

“Are you desecrating my ancestral tongue?”

“Look, guys,” Luke cuts in, shifting the conversation back into focus like a fucking champ. “We need to come up with some kind of plan here.”

“The  _ only plan _ is how do we get these people off our backs?” Jessica says. “Ideally, in a way that doesn't incriminate us.”

Danny twitches, head tilting to the side.

“Incriminate us? What are you talking about?”

Peter coughs into his rice.

“None of us are on police payroll.” Jessica spells out slowly. “What we did back there was trespassing, aggravated assault, and vigilante bullshit.”

Luke hums thoughtfully and says, “Guys, there's one cop I think we can trust. I think we should bring her in.”

Peter leans back, chair legs firmly on the floor.

“I know a couple in the different boroughs, but this doesn’t…”

“This doesn’t feel like the kind of thing to bring the police in on,” Matt finishes for him. “We'd be putting them in danger.”

“As will anyone who goes up against the Hand.” Danny argues. “And as for doing this any ‘legal’ way… Well, look, you saw what happened when we tried that.”

“Is that what that was.” Luke says more than asks.

“It started that way.” Danny responds defensively. “Look, I even put on a tie.”

Matt purses his lips and raises one hand.

He thinks Peter whispers  _ knife hand,  _ and ignores it.

“I promise you, you cannot traditionally fight these people. Not even with whatever it is your hand can do.”

“It's chi.” Danny says.

“It's not.” Jessica says.

Matt grimaces in full.

“What I'm saying is, going at them head on, that'll get you killed.”

Peter shifts uncomfortably.

_ There’s an empty grave at Sacred Saints. _

“Only if we do it alone.” Danny suggests softly.

There’s silence around the table.

And then Jessica says, “No.”

Danny exhales, both hands coming up to gesture around the table.

“Look,” he says, gravel and venom and that boiling, burning sand. “These people took everything from me. I'm gonna take them down, one way or another.”

“I wanted to help  _ one _ kid.” Luke says, his own hands rising above the table. _ “One _ family.”

Jessica shakes her head. “I'm the first to admit when I'm in over my head, and this is way past my threshold.”

The air in Danny’s lungs rattle like he wants to laugh hysterically.

“What are you talking about?” He breathes. 

“Bulletproof.” He says to Luke.

“Blind ninja.” He says to Matt

“Whatever it is you two are.” He says to both Jessica and Peter.

“Classy.”

“I’m a consultant.” Peter adds helpfully.

“I tried being a one-man army,” Danny says, and there’s a grief-twisted regret, a bitterness in his voice, “and it  _ failed. _

“But this…” He tapers off, something like a smile working its way into his voice, “This feels like something else is at work here.

“The four of us show up to fight a criminal organization at the same moment? How obvious does it have to be? This… this cannot be an accident. Minus you, of course.” He says to Peter, who shrugs.

“Red and me are a package deal anyway, for the most part.”

Matt tilts his head away. “As long as he doesn’t fight the Hand directly, then we’re in. Just long enough to get rid of them for good. They’ve been a blight on this city for too–”   
_ “Matt.”  _ Peter snarls abruptly, fingers digging into his arm.

“Jesus, kid, what–” 

Then the smell hits his nose.

The blood.

The sage.

The oil.

“Oh, you  _ gotta _ be kidding me.”

Peter snarls with all his teeth, pushing up from the table, and they all follow suit as the footsteps start to echo.

When he steps into the room, the silhouette is wrong.

“This is one shitty excuse for a hideout.”

“Stick.”

“Matty.”

“Who the hell are you?” Jessica asks.

Stick bobs his head, and then, like the imperious ass he is, says,

“The guy that's gonna help you save New York.”

———

“Now, I need your help.” Stick declares, and Matt feels the insatiable urge to break something.

It feels like Elektra showing up at his apartment all over again, Peter bleeding in his arms.

In lieu of pushing everything off the table, he laughs instead, low and dark and bitter like plastic.

“Yeah, here it comes.”

Luke twitches downwards to face him. “Here what comes?”

Peter growls, low in his throat.

It doesn’t sound human.

Matt wonders how much spider there really is in his DNA.

How that spider  _ changed  _ his DNA.

“‘Friendly neighborhood’ my  _ ass.”  _ Jessica whispers.

“This is what he does.” Matt continues.

Danny turns sort of sideways to look at him.

“How do you know him again?” He aks, voice going high and low with the words.

The answer hits Matt’s teeth like acid crawling up his throat.

“You saw me fighting?” He waits for the barest nod. “I learned it from him.”

Danny doesn’t react for a moment.

Then he says, “You're a blind lawyer, you're Daredevil–  _ and  _ you're a member of the Chaste?”

Matt shakes his head and almost laughs, wagging his finger at Danny like an old cartoon.

“No, uh-uh. I never joined his war. I’m never  _ going  _ to join his war, and  _ neither _ is  _ he,”  _ Matt points a finger at Peter. “But, hey, Stick, this feels like a great time for you and I to talk.”

“Anything you gotta say, you say in front of us.” Luke rumbles.

Matt turns from where he was starting to walk towards the windows.

He’s never liked it when people said that.

Never liked how it implied that  _ he  _ was the bad guy for keeping information to himself.

It was Foster Mom Number Three’s favorite thing to do.

“This is between me and him.” Matt says instead of all of those other things.

Luke doesn’t like it and responds, “Hey, we are  _ all _ in danger.”

Yeah, he fucking knows.

But he doesn’t particularly like the way you’re talking to him,  _ Mr. Cage, _ and one of those dangers is the old man right goddamn there, and him and Peter are the only ones that seem to  _ realize  _ that.

“I don't know you very well, Mr. Cage,” Matt starts, voice low and fangs for teeth, “you seem like a good guy, so trust me when I tell you that with this old man,  _ nothing is sacred _ _.” _

“Kid, it's not just one of us this time.” Stick drawls, like he has any  _ goddamn  _ right, and Matt hates how just a little part of himself calms down at the word ‘ _ kid’.  _ “It's the whole goddamn city we're talking about.”

Matt doesn’t think Peter’s looked away from Stick once this entire time.

He doesn’t think he’s said a  _ word. _

He’s not sure which is worse.

“We're talking about their  _ lives, _ Stick.” Matt says. “We're talking about the lives of their loved ones.”

Jessica’s breathes out, soft and through her nose. “Wait, um, what?”   
“Those tremors that shook up the place, they're nothing compared to what comes next.” Stick elborates, and  _ Jesus,  _ he’ll explain to Jessica, who he’s never met before, what’s going on at the drop of a hat, but not  _ Matt,  _ who he’s known for twenty  _ goddamn years,  _ when he asked what the fuck was going on?

“The Hand's done it before.” He continues, and Matt tries to soothe his hackles. “Pompeii, Chernobyl. Events the history books like to call catastrophes, just cover-ups. 'Cause New York is next. And the only thing keeping Manhattan from crumbling to a pile of dust is the four of you.”

Jessica kicks her chair back and away from behind her.

“All right, I am  _ done _ with this tin-foil-hat shit.”

Danny spins in place to follow her.

“Whoa, where are you going?

“I tried to hang in, guys.” Jessica says. “I really did. But whatever this guy's selling, I ain't buying.”

And then Stick says, “Sit down and shut up,” and Matt has to physically yank Peter out of the air before he goes for Stick’s throat.

———

Peter is still literally hissing and figuratively spitting when Matt hears Luke open the backdoor and start walking back through the hallway.

“She coming back?” Danny asks hesitantly, leaning backwards on his chair legs.

Matt raises his eyebrows around the fuming mutate in his arms.

“No, she left.”

“Use your powers?”

“No, I've just met her.” Matt says dryly.

Danny pushes his chair back onto all fours and rests his elbows on the table, hands clasping together. “How can she not understand how big this is?”

Matt sighs.

“Well, I don't know her too well, but like me, she has a life.” He starts. “No matter how big or small it is, it's still hers.”

Stick bobs his head side to side again, and almost scoffs.

“After all you've been through, Matty, I thought you'd be more open-minded when the time came.”

Matt fights back the urge to snarl and he hears Peter’s teeth clack together as he doesn’t.

He laughs instead.

It’s worse.

“Well, forgive me if I'm not excited at the prospect of facing the Hand again, yeah?”

He turns his back to Stick.

Shuns  _ him. _

It’s feels petty.

It feels good.

“How'd you get involved in the first place?” Danny asks.

And then Stick fucking says, “He's one of the most naturally skilled fighters I've ever known.”

Like he has the right to compliment him, to act like his praise is worth anything at all.

Everything in Matt’s chest feels hot and twisted and melted together into a chain lattice coiled around his lungs.

He hates it.

He was fine before.

He was  _ fine. _

And then  _ Stick  _ had to  _ ruin it. _

“I saw.” Danny mutters.

“Yeah, I trained him to fight a war.” Stick scoffs. “He decided to put on an outfit. Stop muggers in back alleys. Train a kid just like I did and pretend that he’s somehow better.”

Matt wheels back around, teeth bared, but Danny cuts him off and Peter grabs his arm.

“Well, from what I've heard, you're… you're doing a good job.” He says, voice going soft.

“Past tense. He's retired.”

“You know what?” Matt decides. “We are  _ not _ talking about this, all right? I have my reasons, and they aren’t any of your business.”

Stick sits himself down in Jessica’s abandoned chair. “Suit yourself. But I think you two have got a  _ lot _ to learn from each other. And even from that feral piece of work over there. Never known somebody to move through the air that well, even someone enhanced.”

“Of course.” Danny says immediately.

“Fuck no.” Peter near growls, seething like a sea in storm.

“I'm done taking lessons, Stick.” 

“Lessons ain't done with you. Lessons ain’t done with the kids.”

“I ain’t your  _ kid.”  _ Peter seethes, and Matt doesn’t think he’s ever seen him so hostile.

Not since Taskmaster.

“No, but you’re Matty’s and you’re here so you’re gonna sit down and learn.”

“I ain’t gonna do  _ shit–” _

“This isn't her fight.” Luke says suddenly, and honestly Matt hadn’t consciously registered that he’d walked into the room.

“Sooner or later, it's gonna be everybody's fight.” Stick drawls.

Luke sighs, big and loud and  _ tired. _

“Not if I can help it.”

Danny pops his chair back onto all fours from where he’d started leaning it again.

When had he started doing that?

“Me neither.”

Matt takes a deep breath. “Let's just get this over with.”

———

Matt hears Peter jump down the roof access stair well right as they all flood through the door.

“Company?” A woman, he’s guessing Colleen says, before going, “Hey! Whoa!”

Stick walks in her general direction, drawling, “I said I'd bring him back.”

Matt moves around Jessica to pull Peter through the door, something copper blooming in a trough across his arm, before pushing it shut behind him.

“What happened?” Colleen asks.

“The Hand attacked us.” Danny says from where he’s leaning against the window. “They took Luke.”

Colleen jogs towards him and around the support column as Matt pokes at Peter’s bleeding arm. “How do you know they didn't follow you here?”

Matt pauses and listens to the surrounding block, and then pushes farther than that.

“We're clear.” He announces after a moment, and Colleen twists to face him.

“What?”

Then her shoulders tense up as she, presumably, sees that Spider-man is bleeding in her dojo.

“No place we land will stay safe for long.” Stick says.

Danny brushes past him like a storm cloud, almost growling. “We can't keep running forever.”

“I'm not running, period.” Jessica scowls.

He thinks.

It sounds like a scowling kind of tone.

Maybe a silent scoff.

“My company owns a building not far from here.” Danny mutters as he checks a space divided from the dojo by cotton curtains.

“We don't need another hideout.” Jessica says. “We just need for this to be over.”

Matt sighs. “You're oversimplifying it.”

Peter swats his hand away as Colleen inches closer, and shoots a piece of web at his own arm, wrapping it around the furrow like a bandage.

Matt frowns, but doesn’t say anything.

It’ll have to do.

“Oh, am I?” Jessica asked the room. “Or am I the only one of us who isn't in this for a cheap thrill?”

“Jessica–”

“Miss  _ Jones–” _

“And the last time we  _ did _ have a plan,” she continues, “but this one left us to go fight that chick in the spandex.”

“Yeah.” Danny added, “Just like he did in Midland Circle.”

Matt breathes heavy through his nose, but before he can say anything, Peter beats him to it.

“Because we knew her, and she’s supposed to be dead.”

And then a door opens down hall, followed by footsteps, and there’s no time to process the statement as Stick brandishes his sword and Colleen moves ahead of Jessica to grab… a katana, maybe? Some kind of sword in a wood sheath?

Then Peter leans back against the wall, a happy hum in his throat, and Matt smiles.

Luke pushes open the door, smelling like gunpowder and blood.

Danny takes a step forward, shoulders curling and body going relaxed.

He doesn’t think it’s a defense mechanism this time.

“Luke?”

“What happened?” Colleen asks.

“Are you okay?” Jessica questions.

Matt can hear the smile in his voice. 

“I'm fine. Actually, I'm, uh, I'm better than fine.”

And when he takes them down the steps to the van that hit him, and swings open the doors, there’s a man laying there, tied and bound.

Luke stands proud, back straight and vindication in his pose.

“I got one of theirs.”

———

There's no one left in the Bulletin except for Karen.

Peter had quietly assured him that it was dark, and that the lights were off, but Matt had gathered that from the lack of buzzing on the ceiling or pulsing in the walls.

Somewhere between leaving Sowande in the warehouse and heading off to squirrel away their loved ones, Peter had changed into civilian clothes.

Matt’s suit was in the bag Peter had, and they’d been wrapped in his change of jeans and T-shirt.

Now, they were wrapped in the Spider-man suit.

Matt turns on the lamp closest to Karen’s office.

There’s a rustling of paper, and she looks up.

Maybe it’s the fresh bruise on Peter’s jaw, or maybe it’s how Matt curls his shoulders, but seconds after looking up, Karen deflates.

Matt settles for a, “Hi.”

“Hey,” Karen says in response. “Guys, it's after midnight. Peter, what happened to your face?”

He shrugs and Matt hears his knuckles tighten on his bag strap.

“That’s kind of why we’re here?”

She laughs a little, genuine but kind of strained.

Electric blue and shaking smoke.

“I'm gonna need a little more than that.”

Matt sighs.

“It's the Hand,” he whispers, “They came for you before, Karen. I can't let that happen again. I’ve already talked to Foggy.”

“I’m going with you.” Peter adds. “Matt wants me to stay out of it, and make sure you guys are safe where you’re going.”

Karen is silent for a moment.

Then she walks around her desk, stopping right in front of him.

“You’re going out again?”

Matt purses his lips.

“I have to.”

Karen raises a fist over her mouth and looks away.

“Of course you do.”

“Karen–”

“No,” she interrupts, and she doesn’t sound angry like he was afraid she would. “I understand. I know why, I know you, and you’ve always been like this, it’s just– me and Foggy talked about it, Matt, and you– you were getting your life together. Your civilian life. Things were good, and that bounty is still out on you.”

Matt swallows.

It kind of hurts his throat.

“I know. But it’s the Hand, and they’re back in New York, and I’m already involved, and I can’t just walk away.”

He takes a deep breath.

And then he asks, voice shaking, “You remember how Nobu came back?”

Karen focuses back on him.

The puncture in his stomach, the scars across his collarbones, they all burn and sting and boil.

Matt wonders if Peter’s scars feel like that when he thinks of Taskmaster. 

“I remember.” She answers, and then her shoulders go tight. “Why?”   
He takes another deep breath, and this one doesn’t feel like it reaches all the way into his lungs.

“They brought back Elektra. And she doesn’t remember anything.”

Karen goes still again.

“Shit, Matt.” She breathes.

He exhales.

“Yeah.”

“How long have you–?”

“Tonight. A couple hours.”

_ “Jesus.” _

“Yeah.” He says again, because it’s all he can say.

“Matt, she was crazy and definitely bad for you, but I’m. I’m so sorry.” Karen says.

He drags a hand through his hair.

“Thanks.” Matt croaks.

Peter curls his fingers around his elbow, and it’s… comforting.

Maybe not a lot.

But it's something.

“You’re really going out, as him?” Karen asks.

Matt nods, barely a dip of his head, and tries to force his throat to stop closing.

It kind of works.

“You really miss it, don’t you?”

He breathes, shaky, and nods again.

“I said I didn’t.” Matt finally says. “I was lying.”

Karen breathes shaky too.

“Yeah,” she responds. “I know.”

Peter leans his head against Matt’s arm.

“It was killing you,” he mumbles, and it vibrates all the way through his bones.

Matt sighs, and tilts to face the ceiling he can’t see.

“Yeah. Probably.” He smiles, and he has a feeling it isn’t very good.

Karen sighs, drawing a hand through her hair before crossing her arms.

“You said it was the Hand?” She asks tentatively.

He grimaces, and  feels the world move into someplace more comfortable with less emotions and more facts .

“Yeah. We don’t know what, but whatever it is that the Hand is up to, New York is in its crosshairs.”

He pauses.

“I have to do this, Karen.”

“I know.” She says quietly. “But I don't– I don't need your protection, Matt. Whatever it is you're doing, or Daredevil is doing, I'm not a part of it anymore. So…” 

Ah ha.

Ha.

Matt grimaces.

“That may be the case, yeah.” He allows, and then laughs, maybe a bit hysterically. “Unfortunately, it doesn't matter if you're a part of Daredevil's world or not, because they may be coming after Matt Murdock's, too.”

Never should’ve taken off that scarf.

Karen cocks her head.

Takes a deep breath in through her nose.

And then she says, “Shit, Matt, does that mean they know who you are?”

He shakes his head.

He doesn’t know.

“Just can't take any chances.”

_ “Matt.” _

“Can you please just come with me and Peter?” He asks softly, taking a few steps forward. “Just lay low, a couple days. That's all I'm asking. I'm sorry.”

Karen stares at him for a long moment, silent and watchful.

Then she sighs.

“Okay.”

He feels his shoulders slump, and Peter breathes out a sigh of relief.

“Thank you.” Matt says.

Karen sighs again, and starts gathering the files on her desk.

“Don't, Matt. I'm not doing this for you, or for Peter. It's just self-preservation at this point, even if I don’t like it.”

“You deserve better, Karen.” Matt whispers, as softly as he can as he helps her into her coat.

She picks up her bag, and he finds her hand on his shoulder.

“So do you.”

———

“Are you finally going to tell us about this dead woman that isn’t dead?” Danny asks, voice low. “The one both you  _ and  _ Spider-man knew?”

Jessica scoffs.

“I should hope so, considering he almost killed that guy back there.”

Matt clenches his fists and then lets go, listening to the leather creak.

It’s gotten stiff, collecting dust.

He wonders what happened to Peter’s.

If he ever got it repaired, or if it’s just sitting in his closet, ruined and burned.

A broken and dead symbol, scorched and hunted like game.

“Her name is Elektra.” He starts. “She was raised by Stick. Trained to fight the Hand. Which she did, with me. Until they convinced themselves she could serve another purpose and killed her.”

“She looked pretty alive back there.” Jessica drawls.

“I know, but I was there when they…” Matt sighs, and digs his fingers into his palms. “I was holding her when she died. She bled out.”

“Elektra died.” Stick repeats, and then adds, “That thing we've been fighting, it's something else.”

Something in Danny goes tight, shoulder’s tensing and storm clouds rolling in over the lining of his jacket.

That meant something to him.

Something sour and  _ bad. _

“She was resurrected.” He whispers, and Matt thinks he trades a glance with Luke.

“Right.”

“How come you didn't tell us?”

“Shit, sorry,” Matt says, dripping acid and sarcasm, “I’ll tell you all about the traumatic experience of finding out the person that’s trying to kill you used to be the woman you loved, and then sort of created a normal friendship with before she died, and  _ also  _ she has no memory of you  _ or  _ a heartbeat. Let’s all sit down and have story time.  _ My bad.” _

“Hey hey, wait a minute.” Luke cuts in. “What– what do you mean,  _ resurrected?” _

“She’s his ex-girlfriend.” Stick drawls, disappointment sloughing off his tone, and Matt wants to punch him. “Now he thinks he can save her.”

“At least I don’t murder  _ children.”  _ He hisses instead, and everybody’s heart rates  _ skyrocket. _

“That thing wasn’t a child, Matty,” Stick says, “Let it go.”

_ “Excuse me?”  _ Danny hisses.

Jessica lets out a quiet, uncomfortable laugh.

“Jesus Christ, what the fuck is  _ happening??” _

Oh man.

Same, girl.

Same.

Luke jabs a hand at him, and he reels back from it on instinct. “Hey, no. This gal, that's why you nearly got us killed?”

He purses his lips. “When I said her name, she recognized it. She knew me. I think whatever they did when they resurrected her, I think I can get through to her. At the very least she might cause conflict in the Hand. After I talked to her, she kicked the guy that followed us out into a wall.”

“Okay, to be clear,” Jessica says slowly, “we've now used the word  _ resurrected _ three times.”

“It's what they do.” Stick confirms.

“We agreed to put everything on the table, Matt.” Danny says, and he has the audacity to sound angry, to sound  _ hurt. _

“You’re asking me to give all of the horrible, _personal parts of my life,_ when I don’t know anything about you past the surface details!” Matt shoots back. “You wanna know so bad? Fine. Fine! Let me tell you about Midland Circle. Foggy almost _died_ there, and Mrs. Cardenas _did,_ and there’s a pit under there that goes down over forty stories. Let me tell you about Elektra. She came back to New York with Stick, during the biggest trial of my life, and she _died_ in New York. Let me tell you all about _Stick!_ He found me after my dad died and then _beat the shit out of me_ for two years, called it training, and when I had the _gall_ to _care,_ he _left me!_ Until he decided he needed a goddamn _soldier_ for _his war!”_ He nearly roars.

His throat feels raw.

His chest is rattling.

He takes a deep breath.

“Anybody else want to share? No?” He casts around the room, around the silence, and there’s nothing. “I’m sorry, I thought we agreed to _put_ _everything on the table.”_

Danny swallows, harshly.

Luke looks away.

Jessica has her hands in her pockets, facing the floor.

Stick taps his sword on the floor, once.

“Are you done?”

Matt glares at him with everything he has.

Stick tilts his head away.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Now, if we're gonna defeat the Hand, we gotta take Elektra out.”

Matt  _ snarls. _

_ “No, _ Stick. I won't allow it.”

“Do you know how hard this is to believe?” Luke finally says, but there’s a tremor to it.

There’s a weariness about him now .

Stick walks between the four of them, sword nearly dragging along the floor, and Matt is the only one that doesn’t subtly move away. “It doesn't matter what you believe, at the end of the day whatever she is, she's a problem.”

Jessica looks up from the floor, and then away again.

“Lying is a problem.” She says, and Danny walks away, hands behind his head and digging through his hair.

Matt clenches his fists again. “I didn't want to lie. I’m terrible at it. But you don’t have the right to my memories.” He says, and he wants to laugh. “I was trying to protect her. She doesn’t even know who she  _ is.” _

Luke takes a deep breath.

“Well, I'm not.” He thunders, walking closer to Matt. “Now the people I care about are held up in a precinct because you got me protecting some woman you used to know.”

“Don't oversimplify it.” Matt scowls. “I'm trying to help, same as you.”

“The truth is simple, Murdock.” Jessica says, and  he’d almost believe it, with the conviction in the way she says it, if her heart didn’t beat  _ lie _ _. _

He laughs.

“The truth is never simple.”

And then glass flies through the air like bells and blood blooms on knuckles like flowers and there’s other things to worry about, like the shard at Danny’s throat.

“Don't move.” Sowande warns softly, and Matt can hear the glass press just a little bit tighter against Danny’s neck.

All he can hear is the emptiness where Sowande’s heartbeat should be, all he can think about is how copper and metal will fill the air if they screw this up, all he can  _ see but not see  _ is the shaking outline of Danny who has never had a blade held so close to his throat, nearly through his jugular.

“Let's not kid each other.” Sowande continues, voice slow and melodic. “This is personal for every one of us. But now I have the Iron Fist. The key to what the Hand seeks. The key to life, to our salvation. The war is over.”

Then there’s the sound of metal ripping through the air, cutting through flesh, and the glass falls to the floor with a clatter.

Jessica gasps.

Luke takes a step back.

And Stick says, “Not yet,” as Danny scrambles out of Sowande’s grip and the corpse tumbles to the floor, head rolling.

Matt is suddenly very glad Peter isn’t there.

He doesn’t need anymore nightmares about beheadings.

———

“How’re things at the station, kid?”

Peter sighs into the receiver as Jessica steps out of the way of his cane.

“Boring. Detective Knight keeps trying to get us to tell her things. Mostly me, Colleen, and Claire. I think she’s gonna try Foggy next because he’s a decent, not-slimy lawyer and she thinks that means he’s helpful.”

Matt can hear a squawk over the line, and then scuffling, and then a crow of victory.

Then Foggy’s on the phone.

“Matthew, your child is spreading false accusations. What say ye?”

“I mean, I’m a lawyer too,” he says, smiling into the receiver. “And I’m not very helpful at all.”

Foggy huffs. “Absolutely true, but not the question I asked.”

“But it’s the answer you got, ain’t it?”

“Ugh.”

Matt laughs, just a little.

Foggy is quiet for a moment, but it’s kind of.

Nice.

It feels like a good quiet.

Like a piece of normal.

“Hey Matty?”

“Yeah Fogs?”

“You ever do dumb shit to get me put in police custody again and I  _ will  _ unfriend you.”

“You can’t unfriend me!” He laughs. “This is real life!”

“I’ll unfriend you on Facebook.” Foggy says dismissively.

Matt tries to hide a snort and fails.

“Oh, no,” he says through laughter. “Unfriending me on Facebook? Whatever will I  _ do?” _

“You’ll just die probably. Become a hermit. Live in your apartment and try unsuccessfully to kill the plants.”

“Mary of Gael is almost dead, I  _ swear.  _ It’s happening. The others will follow.”

Foggy scoffs. “Nah, buddy, she’s a bear claw. She’s livin’ forever.”

“You doubt my ability to kill the witchy plants?”   
“Absolutely.” Foggy said immediately and without remorse.

_ “Fogs.” _

“If they aren’t dead yet, there is  _ literally nothing  _ that your Catholic ass can do about it.”

“Just you wait, Franklin Nelson, I  _ will  _ remove the invaders from my home.”

Foggy laughs, loud and happy and good, and Matt takes a moment to just listen .

He knows Foggy is kind of mad at him for going out again, but he has to.

He needs to.

And Foggy, for all his kind of anger, kind of gets that.

“Sure you will, Matty.” He says, voice warm. “I’m gonna give Pete his phone back now, because he looks like he’s about to use the table as a springboard, but just. Be careful, okay Matty? For me?”

Matt smiles into his phone, and he thinks Jessica looks away.

“I’ll do my best, Fogs.

“For you.”

———

Matt wakes up slowly and then all at once, wearing a shirt he doesn’t remember changing into, on a couch that isn’t his, with a phone ringing right in his ear in the tone he usually reserves for Peter’s school and the hospital.

He’s scrambling to move, to understand, to right the lamp he hit and stand his ground and figure out where he  _ is, _ but then Foggy is there.

Foggy is there.

Calm and lavender and beach front.

It’s okay.

Foggy is there.

“Whoa, Matt.” He says, hand open in front of him. “Hold on.”

He focuses on Foggy.

He focuses on Foggy, and his dumb, stupid hair gel, and the smell of bad office coffee in his hand.

Matt liked him better with long hair that was loose.

The cons of not being your own boss.

“Foggy. Where are we?” He asks, because Matt had been at the warehouse and Foggy had been in Harlem and  _ Danny was gone Stick was dead Elektra took him killed him– _

“Harlem precinct.” Foggy answers, and Matt tries to focus back on him. “Private office.”

Matt takes a deep breath, and then struggles to take a couple more.

Foggy grabs one of his shoulders, and takes a deep, even breath for him to follow.

“And if we're painting the whole picture,” he adds, with one of his big, dumb arm gestures that might kill somebody, “you look like shit.”

Matt nods, numbly, and then touches the shirt he’s wearing, trying to find a pattern on the fabric.

“They took your shirt for blood samples.” Foggy says and lets go of his shoulder.

It feels cold now.

Matt nods again, because it’s all he can do.

“Right.”

“Claire gave you a quick look.” Foggy tells him as he finds a chair to melt down into. “Nothing's broken. But the cops have a lot of questions.”

Matt shakes his head.

“I wasn't wearing the suit.”

“I know. There is a God after all.” Foggy says dryly, but Matt can hear the worry, hear the relief and the last remnants of panic.

Panic.

Panic panic panic. Matt needs to  _ panic  _ because  _ Elektra and the Hand have Danny. _

“Oh, God, I need to go. He's in danger.” Matt breathes, and starts to push himself right back out of the chair he just found.

“Who?” Foggy asks.

“Danny Rand.” Matt says. “Uh, they took him.”

“The billionaire?” Foggy mutters in confusion, but Matt can barely hear him.

Panic.

Panic panic panic. Matt needs to panic  _ Stick is dead and Danny is gone. _

It hurts more than it should.

It hurts and he hates that it hurts.

“Stick.” He doesn’t hear himself whisper. “She killed Stick.”

Foggy’s heart stumbles, and Matt tries to get his lungs to move, tries to clear his throat and dry his eyes and just  _ breathe. _

He sniffles.

He feels pathetic and sighs, heavy as stone.

Matt drags a hand through his hair and over his neck, tucking his head and trying to control himself.

He pushes down the torn sorrow.

Stick doesn’t deserve it.

He doesn’t deserve his tears or his grief.

He doesn’t deserve them and he isn’t  _ getting  _ them.

“Yeah, Danny.” Matt whispers past the lump in his throat that feels like it’s choking him. “They took Danny.”

He pushes himself out of the chair.

“And then, now… I have to save him from the Hand.”

Foggy stops him, with both hands empty this time, and Matt reaches around him to grab his jacket.

“You are in no position to save anybody.” He states firmly. “They haven't pressed charges, but they found you with two dead bodies.”

Stick and Sowande.

Stick with a stab wound and Sowande  _ with no head. _

“I don't have a choice.” Matt says, and wishes he knew when he started sounding so tired. “He's the Iron Fist.”

“I'm not gonna pretend to know what that means.” Foggy says, tossing his hands up. “Peter couldn’t go into details, not with the cops begging for someone to just tell them  _ something.” _

“Foggy, the person who did this, who, uh, who took Danny…” He takes a deep breath and slides his glasses back on with a calm that he doesn’t feel. “It's Elektra.”

Foggy is quiet, for a moment, and the only sound he makes is the air moving in his lungs.

Then he says, “Peter told me she was alive but it still…” 

“Sounds crazy?” Matt finishes.

Foggy sighs.

“A bit. Because she’s… dead. Undead. Not dead anymore.”

“The Hand took her. They did something to her, like Nobu. Whatever she is, she's not herself.”

“And you think you can actually do something about that?” Foggy asks tightly.

Matt shrugs.

“I have to try. And whatever it is that they took Danny for, what they’re gonna do with him, it’s not good for anyone.”

Foggy’s breath hitches like he wants to say more, but then the door across the hall opens and his mouth clicks shut.

Smells familiar, female presenting he’s guessing, boots and casual clothes, something leather and metal clipped to her belt, light makeup, no gun.

She moves confidently, with familiarity.

She knows him.

She’s also very irritated, all boiling sand, and smells a lot like coffee.

500 for Detective Knight?

“Mr. Murdock.” She says.

“Yes. Is that you, Detective?” He asks politely, puzzled as can be.

Something in Foggy’s shoulders tense up before loosening.

He hates it when Matt pretends to be more blind than he is, Matt knows that.

He asked once.

Foggy had said something about how weird it was to see him be all confused and absent minded when he probably knew more about the people he was talking to than they did about themselves.

Matt knew that he hadn’t meant to say weird, but had said it to spare his feelings.

He’d meant to say upsetting.

Because Foggy hadn’t known, for so long, that Matt pretended, and it hurt him.

Matt hurt Foggy.

And it hurts Matt too.

“You're up.” Detective Knight says dryly. “I've got one of your clients scared shitless across the hallway, and the other one passed out, so I'm gonna need for you to answer a few questions.”

Jessica and Luke.

There’s air passing through his left lense.

It's cracked.

Damn it.

“Oh, well, unfortunately, whatever happened is protected by attorney-client privilege.” He says as pleasantly as he can.

“That's cute, but cut the shit.” Detective Knight scowls, and he’s  _ pretty sure _ it’s a scowling tone of voice this time. “'Cause we both know you're not just a lawyer in all this. You're something more. As of right now, you're a person of interest. A witness to a crime.”

Matt doesn’t laugh.

It’s a near thing, but he doesn’t.

“A witness?” He asks lightly. “What, do you want me to describe how it sounded, Detective?”

He hears Foggy hold back a sigh.

It was probably a disappointed one.

Probably a ‘ _ don’t antagonize the cops’,  _ one.

“Perhaps you didn't hear me when I said,  _ ‘Cut the shit.’”  _ Detective Knight says, and her tone of voice is very even and controlled. She’s keeping herself in check. Control problems? Maybe anger issues? 

“Now I hear they took Danny Rand.” She continues. “A person with that high of a profile? If this falls back on you it's gonna make your life miserable.”

Ha ha.

Oh, Detective Knight.

Before today, it kind of was miserable.

He had good friends and a good job and kind of shitty apartment, but his suit was collecting dust and he’s already had to replace three punching bags at Fogwell’s.

Right now is the best he’s felt in months.

But if he wants to get anything done, that means he should cooperate at  _ least _ a  _ little. _

Matt licks his lips.

“Look, uh,” he takes a steadying breath. “I wanna help. I can't say much, apart from the fact that he is in way over his head. And we need to help him.”

Detective Knight looks at the floor for just a second before looking back up at him.

“Mr. Murdock,” she starts, sounding kind of exasperated. “All due respect… you need to start worrying about helping yourself.”

“Ah, well.” Matt tilts his head down for a moment, and then smiles. “I’ve never been very good at that.”

———

“Detective?” He hears Peter say, voice carefully tentative and soft. “Can I talk to Matt for a minute? Please?”

Detective Knight pauses for a moment, and then sighs, big and loud.

“Okay, kid.” She says. “But just for a minute.”

Peter’s shoulders lift, and from the clack of his teeth he thinks that he might just be beaming.

Matt’s been told it’s very disarming.

Something about the way they’d clicked together had sounded  _ off  _ though.

“Thank you.” Peter says warmly, and then he’s got fingers in Matt’s elbow and he’s gently pulling him away and to the side.

Foggy and Karen meet them.

Peter clears his throat.

“It looks really bad, Matty,” he whispers, “so you’ve gotta be really careful. You’ve been kind of shit at that lately, but the stakes are high this time, okay?”

Matt smiles, and it feels brittle.

“The stakes are always high.”

Foggy laughs, but it’s mirthless.

“Ain’t it so.”  His hand curls around Matt’s wrist, butterfly soft, and for a moment he doesn’t breathe .

Karen rests a hand on his shoulder, and when he leans into it, Peter takes the opportunity to wrap his arms around his waist.

“Is this a going away party?” He jokes softly, but it comes out more serious than he wants it to, more  _ weary  _ than he wants it to.

Peter tightens his arms around his waist, and then Foggy and Karen pull into the hug too.

“Don’t do anything, stupid, Matt.” Foggy whispers into his shoulder. “Please. We’ve got a big case next week, remember?”

“I know,” he whispers back, and tucks his nose into Foggy’s neck. “I remember.”

“Make sure you come back.”

“I will. I promise.”

Karen tightens her arms.

“I want to write an article about your return, okay? So you better not get arrested.” She says, a tight smile in her voice.

“Get my good side, K.”

Peter’s hands bunch in the back of his jacket, like he’s afraid to let go.

“I’ll see you again tonight.” He says into Matt’s police T-shirt, so very soft. “I will. You’ll be okay.”

It doesn’t sound like a promise.

It sounds like a desperate wish .

———

Matt’s going to  _ kill  _ this kid.

“They gone, Matt?” Luke asks, and he has to take a moment to think about something that  _ isn’t  _ all of the ways he’s going to kill Peter and hide his body and explain very gently to May that he's really sorry but her nephew just _ had to die. _

“Yeah, for now.” Matt answers distractedly. Then he grabs Peter by the shoulders and  _ shakes  _ him.  _ “What  _ were you  _ thinking?” _

Peter’s shoulders are tense, and his back is straight, and his head might dip down just a bit, but there’s not a shred of regret in him.

He dimly hears Jessica say, “What’s in the bag?” but it barely registers.

“I’m not sorry. You said not to get involved, and to stay at the station, but then I found Colleen when she was leaving and she was going to help you and it felt like someone had set all my nerves on fire and I  _ had  _ to go, Matt, I  _ had to.” _

And that’s–

That’s harder to argue with.

Because Peter’s gut feelings, since the bite, have never been wrong.

Karen thinks it’s some precognition, magical whatever, but Foggy doesn’t.

Foggy thinks it’s like the whole world is Peter’s web and he can hear everything like Matt can, and his brain processes it all into the gut feeling to  _ react  _ and to  _ move  _ and to  _ know. _

Like when a spider moves away at the last second before it can get caught or stepped on.

It doesn’t really matter though.

What matters is that Peter’s always right.

“I'm here to save Danny and make sure no one gets hurt ever again.” Colleen answers from a million miles away, from the very bottom of the ocean.

“Are you sure?” Matt whispers.

Peter shakes his head rapidly.

“I’m positive. It’s never been this strong before. Not even after the earthquake. This one  _ hurts.”  _ He answers, and Matt thinks he can see it, can hear how tense and tight his muscles are wound under his skin.

Matt hates listening that closely, but it’s harder to avoid when he has a point of contact and he’s so  _ close. _

The bruise on Peter’s jaw has gone down, but he can still smell the acid, can still find the pain.

“How does that answer my question?” Jessica asks Colleen as she walks away.

Colleen doesn’t answer and just says, “We have to go.”

Jessica pulls up to a stop next to them, and Matt doesn’t know what she sees then, in the desperate curl of his shoulders and the lines of Peter’s face that aren’t covered by the blood-soaked bandana, but she moves past like it isn’t there, and points at Colleen’s retreating back instead of saying anything.

“What's in the bag?”

He twists to follow her hand, his own falling away from Peter’s shoulders, and that’s when he hears the engine.

Nevermind.

No time to bag check.

“She's right.”

Peter’s mouth clicks shut and the way his teeth hit  _ still sound wrong. _

There’s the sound of screeching tires as a car pulls to a stop in front of them.

Matt clicks his billy clubs into a bo staff, and that’s when Detective Knight steps out, Claire a second behind.

“Hold it.” 

And then she says, “What a damn minute is that the kid–”

“Claire?” Luke asks, voice confused.

Peter curls around to Matt’s left and Colleen’s right, holding his own clubs tight, staking his claim.

When was the last time they saw the dark of night?

“What happened here?” Claire says, and it sort of registers to Matt that they’re surrounded by a truly insane amount of wreckage and rubble.

“No time to explain.” Luke answers, and Detective Knight cuts in with a bitter sort of, “Like hell there isn't.”

And he gets it, really.

They’ve been dodging her questions all night, giving her bread crumbs and not the full loaf, but they really don’t have time.

Not anymore.

_ The stakes are always high. _

“Please.” Colleen begs.

“You got a  _ minute _ before the full force of the NYPD is here.” Detective Knight says, clear and concise. “So I need you to answer this fast.”

And then she says, “How long you want me to stall 'em?”

———

“Where's Danny?” Colleen asks as they enter a deserted lobby of Midland Circle Financial.

Matt drops to the floor at the same time as Peter, and he strains his ears, tries to feel for the vibrations.

Luke moves his head side to side and says, “Yeah, where is Danny?”

Matt knows that Peter isn’t as good at it yet, at going past his normal extended range and going farther on purpose instead of just during a sensory overload, but it’s like any other muscle, and he’s learning.

He’s getting better at it.

“There's a structure underground.” Matt reports. “He's gotta be there.”

Peter hums. “It’s right where the pit was.”

“How do we get to it?” Jessica asks.

“Figuring that out.” Matt answers.

“Hey, I don't like it here.” Luke suddenly says to Claire, twisting around. “Not at all.”

“Too late.” She says sardonically.

“Elevator,” Peter whispers right as Matt finds it.

“Yeah,” he says and starts to walk. “There's an elevator this way. It goes deep.”

Jessica tips her head at him and starts to follow. “Think he's down there?”

Matt shrugs. “Let's find out.”

Colleen drops the bag and her katana at the same time, and the  _ thud  _ it makes echoes in the still room.

“Just one more thing.” She says, breathing heavy, and they all stop moving to face her.

“What is  _ that?” _ Claire asks quickly as the sound of the zipper peals through the air. 

Peter inhales so sharp it could cut.

Not good.

Jessica sighs, but the weight of it feels different.

“This is not happening.” She mutters.

What?

The hell is in that bag?

“We grab Danny and we get him out,” Colleen explains, “but if we don't end the Hand sooner or later, they'll come after us.”

“Oh, my God.” Claire says, and Matt guesses she saw what was in the bag.

Matt does not have this luxury.

Matt is blind.

_ Matt does not know what is in the fucking bag. _

“This is not happening.” Jessica says, walking away from Colleen.

And then Peter whispers, “It’s C-4, Matt.”

Oh.

Nevermind.

Matt now knows what’s in the fucking bag.

Shit.

_ Shit,  _ did she steal the C-4 that Jessica found in that architects apartment?

Colleen sighs, like this isn’t  _ blowing up a building _ they’re talking about.

“The architect, he was your guy, right?”

Jessica turns in place. “Don't put this shit on me.”

“No.” Colleen says, laying out what can only be the blueprints from the piano on the tiled floor. “He had this plan on how to take this thing out.”

“Okay, I wanna save Danny, too, but not like this.” Claire says.

“They'll have us on obstruction of justice and domestic terrorism.” Jessica adds.

“This isn't just about Danny.” Colleen defends, head swiveling to look at all of them. “It's about New York. You know these people, Claire. They're relentless.”

“There's no guarantee that exploding this building ends their organization.” Jessica says.

“It kills their leaders and cuts the head off the snake.” Colleen hisses.

Everyone’s hearts stumble.

Everyone except Colleen.

Peter’s fingers dig into his Kevlar.

Luke moves away from the wall, gesturing angrily at Colleen. “Hey, we're here to save lives, not take them.”

“These people aren't really alive.” Colleen dismisses softly,  but it sounds personal .

Like an old hurt.

Like how Danny had become a storm cloud at the word  _ resurrected. _

“Plus the whole building is empty.” Peter adds quietly, and everybody moves to face them. “It’s like the airport in Germany. There's no one else here. Just us and them.”

Matt nods at that.

“No other heartbeats.”

Jessica makes a confused noise. “Airport?”

“You're okay with this?” Claire asks him, and she sounds confused and desperate.

Like reeds in the wind and burnt sienna.

She’s known him and Peter the longest.

Maybe there’s security in that.

“I mean, no,” Matt says slowly. “but she's right. And the architect knew it. The only way to end this, to save the city from whatever's coming, is to bring this building down. So unless there are any objections then that's  _ exactly _ what we're gonna do.”

The tension in the room feels like a livewire.

Like there’s an electric current holding the entire floor at a standstill.

And then Luke says, “I don't care how dangerous you say these people are. I don't want any part of this.”

Matt purses his lips. “We're here to get Danny, but Colleen's right, this won't end there. The Hand will keep coming after us. This is our chance to shut 'em down for good.”

Luke doesn’t say anything, but his shoulders do pull back tighter, and his jaw grinds against his teeth from where he’s clenching it.

“They will come back.” Colleen warns. “Again and again. But these could end them forever.”

“Nobu came back.” Peter says, voice tight. “Twice at  _ least _ in the time we knew him. Elektra’s come back once so far. The Hand doesn’t stay dead, Mr. Cage.”

Luke takes a steadying breath.

“I get that you have a history with these people.”

“So do you. So does she.” Matt interrupts before he can really get started. “And so did that kid from Harlem.”

“Detonating a bomb here won't fix what happened to him, okay? Not by a long shot.” Luke says.

He smells kind of like grief and regret.

Like that horrible old hurt the Hand seems to trail like a plague everywhere they go.

Matt nods his head in acknowledgement. “No, but it might help everyone else who will be in danger.”

“And make no mistake, people  _ will _ be in danger.” Colleen adds.

Luke shakes his head.

“I…” He sighs and turns away. “I just can't go along with this.”

The current ripples through the room.

“Okay.” Claire says suddenly. “For the record, everything that's been said in the past two minutes is one hundred percent insane.”

Aw no.

Claire.

“Thank you.” Luke breathes.

_ “But-,” _ Claire continues. 

_ “Sweet Sister.” _

“We all know what the Hand is capable of. We've all been affected.” Claire says, and Matt thinks of that night at the hospital, hood over his face and nothing to protect him as he climbed to get to Claire’s wing.

Thinks of the soldier that had fallen out of the window and the nurse that had bled out.

Thinks of the cover up.

Thinks of how Claire doesn’t have a job anymore, not at Metro Gen, not at  _ anywhere. _

“But they  _ keep coming back.”  _ Claire whispers, and it’s nearing a growl. “And when they do, it's not just crime, it's…  _ horror  _ movie… _ murdery  _ shit.”

“If we don't do this, it's gonna get worse.” Matt adds softly.

Colleen nods. “Take down the building or the Hand takes down New York.” 

Luke firmly shakes his head this time with a heavy sigh.

“This is  _ not _ how I fix things.”

Jessica’s breathing hitches a few times in the silence that follows, like she’s trying to find the words.

And then she does.

“These people have come after our friends.” She starts slowly. “They're showing no signs of stopping.”

“Jess!” Luke hisses in disbelief.

“You know that I've wanted nothing to do with this from the beginning.” Jessica says with a shake of her head. “The architect's brains are still in my apartment. I haven't changed my clothes. Let's just get this shit over with. We'll all sleep easier once they're gone.”

She digs her hands into her pockets, and the way her shoulder’s slump is heavy.

“We can all just…” Jessica sighs, before finding the energy to continue. “Get on with our lives.”

Luke breathes heavy through his nose, head tilting side to side in what really isn’t a no.

“If we do this… no one but those… Hand monsters gets hurt.” He hedges. “Okay? Not one single innocent person. Can we all agree to that?”

Colleen and Peter shake their heads.

“Yep.” Matt hums.

From the way his head moves Luke casts a look around the room. 

“Okay, then.” He says, and then sighs.

“Can't believe I'm saying this, but… let's go do something crazy.”

———

There’s a great big rustling as Colleen moves to lay the blueprints out on one of the marble countertops.

“From what we could tell, the architect's plan was to place explosives in the building's structural center.” She says, dragging a hand across the sheet. “I mean, these look like support beams.

So without them, the building can't stand. Once we find these, we plant the C-4.”

“No remote detonator.” Luke interrupts, holding something in his hand.

“What's that mean?” Claire asks wearily.

Luke holds up the thing a little higher. “It's a time bomb. Once you hit  _ go _ you've got a matter of minutes.”

Claire curls just a little bit away from the trigger. “Are you sure about that? 

Luke sort of… shrugs. “Kind of.”

“Oh, that's encouraging.” Jessica mutters.

“It's basic training.” Luke defends. “They taught us how to run from the bombs, not set 'em.”

And then Peter snatches the trigger out of his hands, rolling it around in his.

Luke kind of just… numbly lets him walk away with it.

He’s learning.

“So what you're saying is once someone activates the charge…” Colleen trails off.

Luke nods. “That's it.”

Peter abruptly slides the trigger back over the table.

“If I had more time and the right tools, I could probably fix that, but I don’t have either of those, so.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Sorry.”

He takes a minute to breathe deep.

“Why do you know how to do that?” Matt asks, dreading the answer.

Peter shrugs.

“Lab Twenty almost killed the Tower last week with a time bomb that wasn’t supposed to be a time bomb, or just a bomb at all in general.”

He thinks he can hear sirens in the distance.

Matt sighs, both hands finding the back of his neck, before he pulls himself together.

“You two put 'em in place.” He points at Colleen and Claire, because completely ignoring what Peter just said is the only way he’s going to get anything done. “Once we're out of the hole, hit the charge, get out. Pete, I want you with us to confirm we hit the elevator, and then back with them.”

Peter nods, and Colleen starts to before stopping abruptly.

“Wait, what? No, I’m going down with you.” Colleen argues. “Last time I stayed behind, Danny got drugged and kidnapped.”

Girl no.

They don’t have time for this.

They  _ really, really  _ don’t have time for this.

Jessica’s lungs heave as she holds down what might be a laugh or a scoff. “What part of this shitstorm sounds like staying behind?”

“This shitstorm is my life.” Colleen hisses.

“Colleen, the three of them have certain abilities.” Claire starts, or tries to.

“I can fight.” Colleen says.

“Exactly.” Claire acknowledges. “I'm saying, as your friend, if I'm going to do this, I need your help a lot more than they do, especially until the kid gets back.”

Bless you Claire.

He doesn’t appreciate her enough.

He really doesn’t.

Colleen breaths deep for a moment.

Unhappiness is stark and angry in the curl of her shoulders .

“Promise me that you won't fail him again.” She says to the whole table, voice low and desperate.

“I'll make it right.” Luke promises with a shake of his head. “I owe him that much.”

Matt can hear those police sirens getting close, enough to hear the engines under the hoods and the tires rolling on the asphalt.

Judging from the way Peter tenses, he can hear the back up too.

“This way.”

“I'll be back, Claire.” Luke says softly, and the tone and the feeling and the  _ phrase  _ feel too similar to what he said to Foggy for comfort. “I promise.”

_ I promise. _

———

“You're right, kid.” Jessica mutters as they pass through a hallway without buzzing lights. “This place is completely empty.”

Peter hums, fingers trailing on the right wall.

“Told you.”

Matt smiles, just a little, as they walk further down the hall.

“A lot of activity under the building now.” He says, before sidling up to the left wall and pulling off his glove.

It’s easier to get a read for inconsistencies and vibrations without the leather in the way.

Peter clicks his tongue.

“This is wall is solid brick.” He reports. “What’ve you got Double D?”

Matt hums and starts knocking on the plaster.

Peter scoffs.

“Of course there’s a hidden secret panel.” He mutters. “They’re evil. They need at least one.”

“Do they?” Jessica asks. “Do they really?”

“It’s in the handbook.” Peter answers.

“Of course.”

Matt knocks on the next panel, and this time it echoes.

“Here,” he motions for Peter. “I need you to open this.”

“Open what?” Luke asks as Peter slips past him.

There’s a metallic groan as he hits it hard enough to buckle.

Jessica inhales sharply.

Did she think it was all the suit?

“Just like Siberia,” he mutters.

“It's a door.” Matt says. “Something mechanical behind it.”

Peter digs his fingers into the new crevice.

“Just like the Arc Reactor,” he whispers.

“What do you mean,  _ mechanical?”  _ Luke questions.

And then Peter rips the metal back like paper.

“Just like the faceplate.” He finishes.

“How strong are you?” Jessica asks after a sudden silence.

Peter shrugs as he presses the panel flat and then move to the other one.

“I haven’t tested the limits,” he says, “ but I opened an Iron Man suit like a sardine can once, after I rendered it inoperable .”

“What the fuck.” 

Peter presses the panel flat against the wall, and then moves out into the open space before leaping out of the way and onto the wall.

Jessica and Luke’s heartbeats skip in panic as he, presumably, hops out of view, before calming at how Matt  _ isn’t  _ freaking out.

“It’s just as deep as I remember.” Peter reports from his perch. “There’s a walkway and then like, one of those cage elevators they have for work sites. It’s lit up all the way to the bottom, too, I’m guessing, but it’s pretty deep so the lights dim out after a while.”

“How deep does this go?” Luke asks wearily.

Matt shakes his head. “It's hard to tell.”

“Kinda like a blackhole.” Peter adds.

“The more I think about it,” Luke mutters, “the less I like our odds.”

“Yeah, well, do like me.” Matt offers, sliding his glove back on. “Don't think about it.”

Peter snickers, just a little.

“You never think, Matty.” He says. “You just react.”

Jessica snorts.

“If you told me a week ago that I'd be here with you two, and goddamn Spider-man, about to blow up some building and fight ninjas to save New York--”

Matt laughs.

“Yeah.”

Jessica sighs.

Matt takes a deep breath.

“For whatever it's worth, I'm glad you're here.” He says softly.

There’s a pause.

Then Jessica says, “What?”

“The circumstances could be better.” He allows awkwardly. “I'm just saying, you know, I'm glad we found each other.”

Another pause.

“I'm not hugging you.” Luke says dryly.

Peter swings back down into the open doorway.

“Aw, but you were  _ bonding.” _

Matt sighs and holds out his arms.

“Come here, you.” He says tiredly.

Peter flips onto the tile and hugs him.

It’s just a bit too tight on his ribs, but he’s not gonna say anything.

Peter’s already so careful with his strength that Matt can pretend, just this once.

“I gotta bad feeling, Matty.” He mumbles.

Matt sighs and squeezes him back.

Something about this feels dangerously final.

He doesn’t know what, but it’s not good.

“I know. You’ve had nothing but bad feelings lately.”

Peter shakes his head and presses further into the Kevlar, like he’s afraid to let go.

“I need you to do me a favor, okay?”

Peter leans back, just a little.

"Keep them all safe, okay kiddo?” He asks softly. “ I'm counting on you. Colleen and Claire and Foggy and Karen. Until this is all over, keep them  _ safe _ _.” _

Peter nods quickly. "I will. Just– make sure you come back."

"I know. I'll come back, Pete. Promise." He smiles.

Peter squeezes him one last time before letting go.

“ See you on the other side, Matt. ”

And then he’s running back down the hallway they came from, through the emergency exit and down the stairwell.

“You guys ready or what?” Jessica asks in the following silence.

“No.” Luke mutters.

Matt sighs.

“No.”

Jessica sighs too.

“Sounds about right.”

———

  
  
  


_ And the thing about the Devil is that he used to be God's favorite. _

  
  
  
_ Before he was cast down into the pits of Hell _ _. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I offer you some [ concept art](https://cassettemoon.tumblr.com/post/190595696361/hello-im-the-author-of-the-antichrist-verse-and) in these trying times?  
> (Feel free to yell at me and chat afterwards!)

**Author's Note:**

> The Mount of Olives is where the Antichrist is said to be slain.  
> The song Peter's listening to is Obstacles by Syd Matters.  
> Next up: Defenders!  
> Ha  
> Hahahhaa


End file.
